The GF Mage
by Tsubasa Kya
Summary: Kagome doesn't like to use GF because she can't answer why GF repress human memories when used. She determines to do everything without using GFs, but when they start popping up everywhere, she may have no choice. FF8Inuyasha xover. Begins from childhood.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: The GF Mage**

Author: Tsubasa Kya

_Disclaimer__: I own neither the "Inuyasha" universe, nor the world of "Final Fantasy". AU Inuyasha, AU FF8 (mainly because I'm not following FF8's story line). _

_YES—I am aware of how many stories I have going. I write what I'm interested in, and obviously I can't randomly stick Squall and company in any of my current stories so… Enjoy!_

* * *

Chapter One

It was well after dark. The majority of the populace was already tucked away in bed with all the lights out. Even the taverns had sent their drunken customers home for the evening and put out the lights.

However, there was always the exception here and there. The most unnoticeable exception was the solitary light shining from a window of 44 Hargrave Court in Esthar's capital city. The mansion was home to one of Esthar's top engineers, Tohiro Higurashi, so when a light remained on in the mansion into the late hours of the evening no one would really think twice.

What the citizens didn't know was that window belonged to the third bedroom on the third floor, and the person who lived in that generously sized room was none other than Tohiro's four-year-old daughter.

As far as children could be described, Kagome was very ordinary. If one were bold enough they might even call the child unsightly, but they would then risk the wrath of Tohiro's wife, Ai. Kagome's arms and legs were barely more than skin and bones which sometimes made citizens wonder if she might be underfed until they saw her face resembled a plump radish and her belly still had plenty of baby fat.

Kagome was a very ugly baby; her skin always looked like someone had sponge painted it with various shades of white and tan, and her lips naturally plump though they were seemed to belong on a much older person instead looking much like a ripe cherry on her face when her mouth was closed.

Even Kagome's eyes did nothing to offset her ugliness as those wide eyes colored like the blue sky of midnight were much too large for her tiny little button of a nose. Teasing from the neighborhood children should have caused the four-year-old to be rather shy around others but instead the ugly child had grown a fierce temper just like her mother.

That temper was now being used to its full potential as the ugly child beat at a helpless doll with her father's wooden three-foot ruler which had been snatched secretively from his work room earlier in the day and hidden under her blankets until night.

Such aggressive behavior was not usually considered 'ordinary' but in the Higurashi family, at least as far as the child went, it was very usual. It was ordinary behavior because unlike other little girls at her age who played tea party with their dolls, Kagome played games of good versus evil.

Looking at the treatment from the doll's point of view, one might think the behavior to be violent and unnecessary. But when looked at from the child's point of view, one realized it was not a doll Kagome was fighting but instead it was an evil T-Rexaur with a jaw full of sharp teeth and a mean tail. When she hopped around on the floor and climbed onto her bed only to jump off and land in a heap on the floor it wasn't because she wanted to but rather it was because she had to in order to get away from the evil fiend's charging head. When the wooden yard stick broke, it wasn't because she hit it too many times and too hard on various items in her room but instead it was because the T-Rexaur had snapped it in half with his gaping maw.

With her 'sword' broken, the child had to dodge another attack from the imaginary fiend. However, Kagome wasn't about to throw in the towel yet. She had a battle to win and a princess to save—said princess being a small, cuddly looking cotton stuffed bear—before she could let herself go to sleep.

So, with a mighty shriek emitting from her chubby cheeks, Kagome climbed up onto the T-Rexaur's back (a plush couch in her rather lavishly decorated room) and innovatively crushed the T-Rexaur by belly flopping on it. With her adversary defeated at last, Kagome screamed with excited cheer and raced to the stuffed bear, hugging it to her with all her might.

That was, of course, until the door to her bedroom opened up and she heard her mother say in a tired voice, "Kagome, what are you doing out of bed? It's three in the morning!" Her mother then clucked her tongue, "Papa isn't going to like _this_."

That was when the rather unsightly child dashed to her bed and hid under the covers. Her mother sighed and flipped off the lights. "Goodnight, my princess," her mother chimed.

Kagome called out, "I'm not a princess! I'm a warrior!"

The next morning as always, Kagome was the first one awake despite her late night battle. Kagome was not allowed to use the stairs or the elevator on her own. They had locks to prevent her from doing such. These prohibitions didn't stop her from going to another floor, however.

Her father—engineer that he was—had installed a set of slides going from her room to the first and second floors of the house. One led into her playroom on the first floor, the other led into her playroom on the second floor just as in the second floor playroom there was a slide leading to the first floor playroom.

She'd always been told very firmly that slides were one-way paths only, but she had also learned through recent trial and error that slides also go _up_. With a happy shriek, Kagome practically flew down the slide to the first floor, landing with a poof on a plump cushion.

With her tummy growling, the ugly little child set off for the kitchen. There she found a servant who made her a bowl of oats for breakfast. Kagome was barely able to stay still as she ate. She was smiling and kicking her feet, excited for the day ahead.

Ordinarily her day followed the same basic pattern in the recent months. She would get up, slide downstairs, eat breakfast, and then prowl the first floor of their house for fiends to defeat until it was time for her father to go to work. She had come to learn that when she heard nine consecutive loud rings—which was the sound of the church bell down the road—then it was time to meet her father in the foyer for a kiss, a hug, and a brief, "Have a nice day."

After her father left, her ordinary day would then resume with more fiend hunting which had been limited to the first floor until she learned how to slide _up_. Once she learned to slide up, she opened herself up to a world of new fiends to battle because only when she was on the third floor—the floor her bedroom was on—could she battle T-Rexaurs.

She wouldn't get much fiend hunting in before her mother found her and kissed and hugged her and then told her to be good for Maria the nanny while her mother was off at work. Maria seemed to always be around the house from the moment Kagome woke up to the moment she tucked in at night. She never said much, but she followed Kagome around the mansion even if Kagome wasn't sure why. The only place Maria wouldn't go was Kagome's father's work room which made Kagome certain there had to be some really mean fiends in there, though Kagome had yet to find any.

After lunch, Maria would read Kagome a story of Kagome's choosing before nap time. Kagome always picked the same one: Kikyou, the Warrior Priestess. It was a true story, but Maria never told Kagome it wasn't the whole tale. Someone had, at one point in time, decided to take the true story and boil it down into a child's illustrated story book.

The ordinary day would pick back up after naptime with a trip to the store with Maria and when she arrived home she would help Maria put away the groceries which always made her feel like a hero because Maria couldn't stand on the counter to reach the high shelf on the cupboard.

When the groceries were put away, Kagome would retreat to one of her playrooms to scour through her toys for something to beat up fiends with. More often than not, this task only resulted in making a mess but the four-year-old didn't notice. All she knew was that when morning came, her toys would all be back in the toy chests and the only thing she could imagine would move all her toys where she couldn't get at them without searching would be fiends.

With her playroom sufficiently messed up and some soon-to-be-broken toy in her hands, Kagome would resume the search for fiends. Eventually her mother would return from work and locate her. Kagome would play with her mother until the servants said dinner was ready.

After dinner, her mother would help her take a bath—so that fiends would not smell her approach and would be caught unawares, of course—and they would play games or read stories until bedtime. Kagome would hug and kiss her mother goodnight, and her mother would tuck her into bed. However, what usually happened after her mother left was that fiends would appear and Kagome would simply have to defeat them. Most often Kagome's mother caught her up before she could defeat the fiend, but fiends _always_ ran away when either of Kagome's parents was around and they wouldn't come back until morning.

That morning, however, even the four-year-old knew her day wasn't going to be ordinary. She would be going on a special trip with her father and not even her mother was going to be there.

Kagome was very happy to spend the whole day with her father, so after breakfast this morning, Maria took her upstairs in the elevator to her room and dressed her in a pretty blue outfit comprised of shorts and a bell shirt. Kagome's long, ordinary hair was tied back with a white ribbon which was bobby pinned to stay in place. Lastly, Kagome's outfit was complete with adorable stockings and buckle shoes.

It was unfortunate that even such a cute outfit did nothing for the ugly child except display exactly how unsightly she really was. Maria took the excited child downstairs in the elevator (strictly refusing to let Kagome slide in her special outfit).

In the foyer, her father was already waiting for her. Kagome didn't even blink at the fact that her father was dressed in his work clothes: a nice dyed blue wool sleeveless sweater, a crisply ironed white dress shirt, black slacks, and a white lab jacket. She also didn't notice the tension in the air between her mother—who still stood in her nightgown and bathrobe—and her father.

All she knew was that the day was going to be very special. Her father reached out a long fingered hand to her. Kagome reached up and clamped her tiny, twiggy hand on his.

They were about to leave when Kagome's mother cried, "Don't you dare let anything happen to my baby, Tohiro!"

Tohiro said nothing, but he pushed his thick glasses up his long nose and sniffed. Kagome waved to her mother. "Bye-bye, Mama!" she said.

Father and daughter left the house and walked the few paces to her father's car where a servant was waiting to buckle Kagome into a temporarily installed child safety seat. Kagome was so busy trying to look at everything inside the strange vehicle she unintentionally made the servant's job harder. She had never been in a car before. Maria always walked with her to the store.

With her buckled in, Tohiro got into the backseat with her and began reading some papers he kept in a folder under his arm. This went unnoticed by the child who was too busy trying to figure out how to get out of the uncomfortable seat that she was sure was a fiend and trying to eat her. The servant who had buckled her in got into the front of the car and drove them away from the house and through the front gates at the end of the drive.

"Stop that, Kagome," her father ordered, so Kagome was forced to obey.

Being the innovative child that she was, Kagome found a new way to occupy herself in a very stereotypical fashion. "Where we going, papa?" Kagome asked.

"We're going to the museum." Her father responded.

Kagome looked out the window of the vehicle and pointed to one of the many large buildings they were passing. "MUSEUM!" she screeched, startling her father enough that he dropped his papers.

His lips pursed in displeasure but the child did not notice his irritation. "That is the church. I will let you know when we are there."

"Oh. Okay papa," Kagome said. Tohiro was able to have about thirty peaceful seconds to organize his papers again before Kagome asked, "Are we there now?"

"No." Tohiro said.

Kagome asked, "Why?"

Of course, Tohiro would never have known it with as little time he spent with children, but he would never—no matter how intelligent he was, or how great an engineer—be able to answer that question satisfactorily. He spent the rest of the car ride floundering for an answer that didn't result in another 'why'.

He never made it.

They arrived at the museum and spent the morning there. Kagome was a bundle of joy when they arrived in a section devoted to the anatomy of fiends. Tohiro was very happy she was taking an interest in biology at such a young age because to him that said she wanted to know how things worked.

What he failed to realize was her true interest in the creatures. Before the trip to the museum, the only fiends she knew to exist were T-Rexaurs, Bite Bugs, and CaterChipillars. Just like learning to slide up, this had unlocked a whole new world for her.

"What's that one, papa?" Kagome asked over and over. Her father would read to her about the fiend—its name, the region of the world it could be found in, and he would read to her all the biology of the creature as it was listed on the information boards. Most of the information was generalized, but nevertheless, she did enjoy her time with her father at the museum.

She didn't want to leave the museum at lunchtime, but her father promised she would like the next place even better than the museum. On the drive to the Renaissance festival, he told Kagome about his days in Engineering School, though he really didn't get to say much as she always interrupted with silly questions that weren't on topic.

The four-year-old asked things such as, "Did papa battle any T-Rexaurs?" when he was telling her about Drafting and Design class. Because she kept asking him questions, he didn't have the opportunity to pick up the small black folder and organize it.

Instead, he had to tell her, "No, but I did dissect a Fastitocalon-F in Biology my first year at the university."

At that point, Kagome looked confused because he had used several big words—things such as 'dissect' and 'biology' and 'university'. Aside from that, she had no idea that Fastitocalon-F's were water fiends. Tohiro had forgotten he was keeping company with his daughter who was only four and not the intern he had hired recently whose voice was exactly the same as Kagome's (though it should be obvious since his intern would never call him 'papa'…).

Tohiro's driver stopped at the entrance to the festival and got out to unbuckle Kagome. With the child gripping several of Tohiro's fingers, the driver drove off and father and daughter entered the festival grounds.

Kagome enjoyed herself quite a lot as her father took her around. She got to play all sorts of games involving number guessing and balloon popping and even fish catching, though her balloon popping game ended quickly when the dart veered course and poked the game attendant instead.

She did win a toy sword in the number guessing game which she stuck through a belt loop on her shorts with pride. They ate festival food and Kagome quickly found out how yummy hotdogs were. Maria and the other servants never made hotdogs. They always cooked from scratch so it was Kagome's first time for hotdogs.

They left the festival at half past two, though Kagome wouldn't know unless someone told her. Tohiro had learned that Kagome wouldn't talk if she had something to occupy herself with so he bought her a ridiculously large lollipop. That way he could reorganize his very important papers which he would need shortly.

It took them half an hour to get to their next destination: the Presidential Palace. When Tohiro looked up at his daughter, he expected to see her still eating her lollipop, but all he saw was her chewing on the large stick. "Where did the lollipop go?" he asked his daughter incredulously.

"Candy all gone!" Kagome chirped with a bright blue smile. He winced as he looked at her. Her face, hair, clothes, hands, and even her legs had sticky blue sucker remnants on them.

"Candy all over," Tohiro amended in a soft, mildly horrified tone.

The servant (much to Tohiro's relief) was already prepared for such an event. Tohiro made a mental note to make sure his driver got a pay increase after this day because Tohiro would not have managed this situation on his own. But the servant had wet wipes and a fresh yellow shorts-and-shirt outfit which quickly fixed the messy child up. Kagome wouldn't let her outfit be complete without her new toy sword.

Kagome and Tohiro went inside the Presidential Palace. They barely got three feet past the front door when Kagome suddenly started whimpering. Tohiro looked at Kagome, sure there could be no more surprises after the candy. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Potty!" Kagome whined.

"Can't you hold it?" he asked her, unaware that asking such a question to a four-year-old only made them need to go even more.

"POTTY!" Kagome cried. "POTTY, NOW!"

Tohiro felt slightly frustrated at the sudden attention being drawn to them, but he supposed she might be due for a bathroom break. She hadn't gone all day, after all. So Tohiro was forced to locate a restroom for his daughter, which was harder than it should've been because he had no clue where the public restrooms were. He never used them.

Soon he was running through halls, carrying his ugly child in search of a bathroom. They barely managed to find a bathroom, but Tohiro was just glad they did find one. If they hadn't, he knew there would be no recovery from the disastrous event—at least for him. She might be able to get over it, but the embarrassment he would suffer would be too much.

He recalled his wife's instructions to make sure Kagome washed her hands after going to the bathroom so he did just that. Afterward, the two made their way back to through the halls and Tohiro used his security clearance card to open a hidden door in the wall that led to an elevator only certain authorized people had access to. This elevator went _down_ into the depths of the earth.

Tohiro began to ignore his daughter in favor of reading his file. He clearly didn't know much about children because he didn't think Kagome could get in trouble in such a small space. In turn, Kagome decided _she_ was going to use her new sword to push the buttons on the elevator. It was partly her mother's fault for showing Kagome how to push the buttons on the elevator.

Soon the elevator was stopping on each floor, and all the lights were lit up. Kagome tugged on her father's lab coat. "Papa, papa, look! I pushed all the buttons!" she said proudly.

"Mhm," her father murmured. Tohiro never noticed how strange it was that the door would keep opening.

Kagome watched as the door would open on a new floor, each time showing something different than before. Then the door would close again and they would move slowly but surely toward the next floor down. Sometimes there would be people, and sometimes there would not be. Sometimes there were just long halls, sometimes there was just a big room with stuff in it.

And Kagome's father had forgotten her, though she would never really know that because she was four and these things were not obvious to her. However, anyone who looked at him would realize Tohiro was currently more involved in that black folder of his than the fascinated child who was watching the doors open and close before her.

Because Tohiro wasn't paying attention, he didn't notice when Kagome's childish curiosity took her away from him and she got off the elevator on floor B12, leaving her father's side to go fiend hunting with her new sword.

Floor B12 began as a very long hall with doors lining both sides. There weren't any adults in sight, and only the lights above her lit up, causing darkness further down the hall. Completely unafraid, Kagome headed down the hall and tried to open the first doors she encountered. It wasn't hard; all she had to do was stand in front of it and the door would slide open on its own.

Ultimate curiosity carried her into the room to her right. When the sensors picked up motion, the room's lights came on. Walking around the room, Kagome began searching for fiends. She couldn't find any in the room, even after searching under the bed and the potty.

Finding nothing in the boring room to attract a curious four-year-old's attention, Kagome moved on to the next door which opened up just the same onto a boring room with a bed and a toilet.

Finding nothing in the first two rooms might have deterred an adult from going further, but Kagome was only four and finding nothing only resulted in being more curious. She kept trying room after room until finally when she stepped in front of a door, the door never opened.

So, she did the next best thing and took out her sword and began banging on the door. Very quickly the evil door had become a Blitz fiend, one of those new fiends she just learned about at the museum which had a skeletal body covered in metal armor.

However, no matter how hard she hit the Blitz fiend, it wouldn't be defeated but it did disappear and leave the door in its place. She wasn't the type of four-year-old to give up on her quest though, so she tried to think of a way to get the door open.

The way her four-year-old mind imagined it, she could bang on it some more to get it to open, although an adult would have seen that banging on it the first time didn't do anything so banging on it a second time would likely also not do anything. Since the door was so tough to open in the first place, she knew there had to be either really good fiends to battle, or else a treasure chest inside. Kikyou the Warrior Priestess was always finding treasure chests, after all.

She was going to pound some more on the door but the sound of scratching stopped her. _Scratch-scratch-scratch_, the noise went. For a moment she listened to the scratching of whatever-on-metal.

Then, like any four-year-old would do if they were as brave as Kagome, she asked, "Hey! Are you an evil monster?"

She heard amused laughter though she never registered how mocking it's tone was. "Hey! Are you an evil monster?" the unknown thing inside the room said back to her in a voice identical to her own.

"I asked you first!" Kagome yelled.

The identical voice called back, "I asked you first!"

"NO, I DID!" Kagome screeched and banged on the door with her sword.

"NO, I DID!" the voice echoed, but responded with a scratching noise. _Scratch-scratch-scratch._ Kagome didn't notice how the second scratching pattern was the same as the first, with long scratches and short scratches.

Finally deciding that anyone who sounded like her could not be evil, Kagome asked the voice, "Can I come in?"

There was a brief pause before the voice said, "Why?"

"I'm hunting for monsters," Kagome replied. "I'm gonna be a warrior."

"There is a control panel all the way at the end of the hall in the last room. You'll need to find the switch for my room to unlock it, otherwise the door won't open."

With those words said, Kagome asked, "How come the door won't open?"

"Because it's locked."

"Why?" Kagome asked.

"Because someone flipped the switch while I was in here."

"Why?" Kagome asked again.

"Because they're paid to."

"Why?"

Clearly annoyed, the being on the other side of the door banged on it. "GO FLIP THE SWITCH!" they yelled.

"Why?" Kagome asked.

There was a pause before the voice said, "Because you…want to come in here, right?"

"Uh-huh!" Kagome said.

"Well all you have to do is flip the switch."

"Okay!" Kagome chirped and she went to find a switch she could flip. Her quest was turning out to be a pretty exciting one, of course. She wandered off looking for a switch but ended up getting distracted after only a few steps. Any adult who truly wanted to be in the room would have immediately followed the instructions given and found the switch, flipped it, and then returned.

Kagome, however, completely forgot her mission by the time she encountered a door which was—as it would happen—the next door down the hall. Four-year-olds weren't known for their incredible attention spans, after all.

She stared up at the taller-than-her sliding door that wouldn't open. However, this time when she got frustrated at the door that was locked and began banging on it, she wasn't met with a voice identical to her own speaking to her. Instead, the inhabitant of the room let out an angry roar that shocked her into tumbling backwards.

Ordinary little girls would have run crying to their mothers at a sound like that which shook the walls. The ugly little child wasn't normal though, and she—instead of being afraid—got up and screamed as loud as she could in a war challenge and persisted in her banging on the door, making the inhabitant of the room more and more agitated.

"GO FIND THE SWITCH!!" she heard the voice from the first room scream from just down the way.

She walked back to the first door and stared at it, ignoring the roaring elsewhere. "What's a switch?" she asked.

"Arg," the being moaned before banging on something within its room. "SHUT UP YOU STUPID PEST!" Unnoticed to the child, the creature in the next room over stopped roaring, obeying the command of the being who sounded like Kagome.

"I'm not stupid, Stupid!" Kagome yelled, banging on the door between them.

"Don't call me stupid!" they snapped.

"You are stupid anyway!" Kagome stuck her pink little tongue out at the door.

"I'm not the one dumb enough to ask what a 'switch' is! How is it you don't know?"

"Well, I could have papa tell me…"

"God, humans are such morons," the being muttered before calmly explaining, "The switch you're trying to find is a red button. Push it and all the doors will open."

Kagome paused for a moment before asking, "Why?" having already forgotten why she was to find a 'switch' and push it.

"I'm doomed," the other person moaned. "Doomed to spend an eternity in this damn tiny hole."

"Do you like being in there?" Kagome asked.

"You aren't that new intern are you? From floor B13?"

"I'm Kagome!" Kagome chirped happily.

"Well, that answers that question… but man, you sound just like her! Though, I guess I should'a known you weren't her."

Kagome promptly ignored the being on the other side as her attention was caught by the sound of adult voices down the hall. "Papa!" she cried in excitement and took off down the hall. As a child, she was fully certain that one of the voices would be her father, though her father was still several floors beneath her.

"Wait, come back! Find the switch!" the being called out to her, but the plump little girl never registered the words. She came to a 'T' intersection of halls and came careening to a halt, her bouncy raven curls fluttering about her head as she looked down both halls for the adults.

She didn't see her father, but that wasn't as surprising since the hall was completely dark beyond six feet in either direction of her. However, lit up like it had a halo was a metal door different than the others she had encountered, being that this door had a green light lit up where normally one would find a doorknob.

The child's interest was perked and she went to touch the light. This proved a useless effort as the door snapped open, the motion sensors kicking in and opening the door. When the door opened, the lights in the room came on and Kagome walked in with wide, excited, innocent eyes that—if one faced the truth—was not going to assure a safe ending for all involved.

The room she had entered was filled with monitors, gismos, and gadgets of all sorts. Keyboards with multi-colored lights on them stood in many places, and there were chairs on wheels seated neatly against the desks. There weren't any adults present, but apart from the security guards (who had yet to come across the small child) no one was working on floor B12 on that Saturday.

Kagome darted eagerly across the room, launching herself onto a chair. The room with all its levers and buttons looked like it would be more entertaining than sneaking into her father's workroom at home and pushing the keys on his computer! Of course—her father's computer was always turned _off_ when she did it, so in general (except the potential stickiness going from child-finger to key which her father could never explain as to its appearance) no damage was ever done.

Letting out a loud squeak as the chair rolled across the room and bumped a panel, Kagome started pushing all the keys in, crawling half on top of the panel when she couldn't reach buttons. Unnoticed to her, the monitors mounted around the room started going crazy as she pushed button after button. Lights turned off and then on, and in one of the monitors, two security guards were paused in confusion, their severe looking guns moving from their shoulders to their hands.

"BUTTONS!" Kagome cried and shoved herself away from the panel, sliding across the floor to another panel so she could play with those ones. In the monitors as she started pushing buttons and flipping levers on that long panel she failed to notice how the doors were opening and closing and opening again.

The two security guards began shooting as fiends came from doors around them, though still—with no sound—Kagome never noticed the havoc she was wrecking. Once she'd pushed all those buttons, Kagome grew bored and spun on the chair. In her spinning, she noticed the mother of all buttons and squealed. It was big, blue, and the only one on a large panel.

The four-year-old excitedly pushed her chair over to the panel, climbing up on it to stare eagerly at the button. It was the only button that she knew of in the room she hadn't pushed. Being a four-year-old, she obviously didn't think about whether or not pushing it would be a good thing.

Instead, she just pushed it. A loud voice boomed from somewhere Kagome couldn't find. At first, all she heard was, "WARNING! WARNING!" The voice was accompanied with a loud noise that was a mixture of a buzz and a beep. Then the 'warning' changed to, "Experimentation Fiends Escape On Floor B12. All Personnel Report To Elevator For Immediate Evacuation. Ten Minutes To Dispersal Of Sleeping Gases."

Kagome, of course, had no idea what the voice was saying. Having grown bored of the room already—but not the chair—Kagome walked the chair to the door. Outside the room, the lights were flashing sporadically as all sorts of fiends went from their room into the hallway. Kagome watched as a mean looking fiend attacked a Bite Bug, leaving the Bite Bug in a pile of its own goop.

Even the unordinary child squeaked in revulsion at the sight of blue juice oozing all over the place. Her squeak attracted the attention of the mean fiend and as it turned to her, she recognized it as a T-Rexaur. It was only a baby one, but it was still pretty tough looking.

Kagome got over her disgust at the blue goo and made ready with her new toy sword, prepared to defeat the T-Rexaur. After all, it was just a baby one, and she'd beaten several mama-Rexaurs, right?

The baby T-Rexaur charged at her with mad eyes, its head lowered to head butt her.

"WHAT ARE YOU STANDING THERE FOR?" Shrieked a voice as she was tackled out of the way of the Rex. The Rex crashed into the chair and tumbled into the panel room. Similarly, Kagome tumbled to the floor in a mass of chubby body parts with—strangely enough—herself, although she didn't notice the strangeness of this fact.

As she and herself stood up, Kagome gaped at… herself. "There are two Kagomes!" Kagome shrieked, pointing at the new Kagome.

"Ah, great." The other Kagome groaned in irritation Kagome didn't notice. Fiends down all three halls around them were attracted to her screech and began zoning in on the two Kagomes. Kagome number two grabbed the ugly child by the hand and darted down the left hall, mostly because all they could see down that one was Bite Bugs—by far the least of the fiends they would need to concern themselves over, as compared to the baby T-Rexaurs and young purple Behemoths, both very vicious creatures no matter how often Kagome imagined she beat a T-Rexaur back home.

As the Bite Bugs noticed them a fraction of a second too late, dipping to sting them as they passed but just missing, Kagome yelled, "I can take them! I'm a warrior! I don't need to run!"

It quickly became obvious which Kagome was which as the newcomer, still dragging Kagome away from the fiends for reasons unbeknownst to either of them, manipulatively stated, "These aren't your ordinary fiends! They're genetically enhanced."

Huffing slightly from running and—with the help of the other Kagome—dodging the enemy fiends, Kagome asked, "What is genticly inhensed mean?"

"It means these ones are super powerful. You're a warrior, right?" Kagome number two asked, to which Kagome chirped 'yes'. "Well, warriors have to level up. Right now, if we try to take these fiends on, we'll be eaten and then it'll be game over for us!"

"So are we going to level up?" Kagome asked excitedly.

"Uh, yeah, sure." Then Kagome number two winced slightly, internally wondering why they bothered with the ugly little girl. They came to a corner in the hallways and could now hear the sound of popping noises as gunblasts went off somewhere ahead. "Okay, not that way… Then where?" Kagome number two asked no one in particular before glancing around.

The real Higurashi child had disappeared, however, and Kagome number two panicked before noticing the popped off vent cap behind them. They knelt down and saw the chubby child crawling in through the vent. Deciding it was as good a plan as any other, the other Kagome followed the ugly girl in, replacing the vent cap behind them. "Wait up!" Kagome number two said.

"Nyah nyah!" Kagome said and then crawled faster still.

They could hear the overhead warning, "Two Minutes Until Dispersal of Sleeping Gases. All Personnel Must Evacuate. All Personnel Must Evacuate."

In the vent shaft, they could hear a grinding noise up ahead. Kagome crawled through what Kagome number two thought was a part of the shaft that was getting smaller. Indeed, there was what looked to be a closing door. Kagome number two barely made it through the thing before it sealed, and with it shut, the shaft became very dark.

"Keep going forward," Kagome number two told the ugly girl.

Kagome crawled a few feet forward and then tumbled down a sloping vent shaft, with her look-alike following after. They landed right next to a vent grate which, with the added pressure, popped off and left the two in a heap on the floor.

Kagome's distracted father looked up at the irritating noise. Kagome would never know it but he had not even noticed her absence for the past hour. "Kagome, don't make a mess over there," Tohiro said. It was truly a miracle that they had landed right in Tohiro's office; a stroke of luck, though Kagome could indeed be considered excessively lucky.

Upon seeing two Kagomes, however, Tohiro had to pause and he took his glasses off to clean them, checking them to make sure there were no more smudges. When he put them back on, there was only one Kagome, so he shrugged the double vision off and started to pick up a rather large model and his black folder. "Come along, Kagome. We don't want to be late for my meeting with the President."

Instantly forgetting about everything that occurred on floor B12 (the fact that she was four and as such not constantly brooding on one particular event need not be mentioned) Kagome skipped after her father as he grumbled things like, "B12 is _always_ causing a raucous. They should just close them down already—they're getting nowhere on their research, and the space could be used for more useful projects!"

"Papa!" Kagome chirped as they again entered the elevator. "Can I carry something?"

Her father looked down at her, frowning thoughtfully. "Where is your toy, Kagome?" he asked her, at last noticing something about her.

"I think T-Rexaur ate it," Kagome said. "But it's okay, 'cause I'm gonna level up and then beat T-Rexaur, just like Kagome said!"

Her father looked at her for a long moment before saying, "You really like fiends, do you?"

Kagome shook her head vigorously. "No! I'm gonna be a warrior, papa, and beat all the monsters like T-Rexaur and Bite Bugs. Just like the great Lady Kikyou! She beats all the monsters in dark closets and under the bed so little girls and boys can sleep safe, you know!"

"I see," her father said dubiously before they got off the elevator on the first floor and Kagome had to follow her father's brisk pace.

When they got to the meeting room where Kagome's father was to meet with the president of Esthar, Tohiro was early. He set his proposal model on the table and began setting up, once again leaving his four-year-old to her own devices as he fiddled with a small computer that would project a presentation onto a larger screen.

Kagome, being the curious little thing she was, decided to climb up onto the table and peer down at the model. The colorful little pieces looked like they would be fun to move around. She plucked one off the board and bit it, but gagged at the taste. "Yucky," she complained, and tossed it behind her. The round cylinder bounced on the carpet before landing under a chair.

Next she plucked off the piece that closely resembled a person and stuck it on top of the small model of the presidential palace, though she didn't know that was what the large thing was supposed to be modeled after. Several round disks were attached to the model. Kagome pulled one off and dragged wires with it. When the wires wouldn't let her remove the disk, she moved on to a new target: the tiny model of a car. She yanked the car off the model and began banging it on the little person standing atop the presidential palace.

That was the precise moment Tohiro turned to look at the raucous his daughter was creating—and the precise moment that President Loire decided to walk into the room. Tohiro paled and quickly rushed to stop his daughter from terrorizing the model of the city. "M-Mr. President!" he said, wondering what was wrong with his daughter. His wife had said Kagome was a perfect angel…

Of course, what Tohiro failed to realize was that Kagome might indeed be a perfect angel when she was _watched_ properly, but if left to her own devices for too long, she—like any other child—would find something to humor herself with.

To Tohiro's absolute surprise, the young President didn't scowl or growl or ask why Tohiro would waste his time with what was obviously a ruined presentation (like the impatient Sorceress Adel used to do), but instead President Laguna Loire laughed.

And even more surprising to Tohiro was Kagome's reaction to the President's presence. "'Guna!" she cried joyously and raced across the table, literally leaping from the edge to be caught by the grinning President.

Tohiro was confused, and found it easy to be angry as well, at the new discovery. President Loire walked around the table, the soldiers who had come with him standing back by the door. "Hello, Mr. Higurashi," he said cheerfully. "Hello, little warrioress!" he said to Kagome.

Kagome giggled and blew a wet kiss on the young President's cheek. "Papa got me a lolli, and we saw lots of monsters. I beat lots of 'em too, but one ate my sword," she added.

The President chuckled. "I'll bet they did! But you're a tough nut to crack, aren't you?" he tickled her, eliciting a series of giggles from her. Tohiro wanted to know how the President knew his daughter, but he couldn't think of any way to broach the subject without sounding accusatory, and he had to be on the President's good side.

"Uh-huh!" Kagome chirped. Then, in a voice that only a child could manage, she asked innocently, "When are you gonna come see mama again?" After that, Tohiro no longer felt like doing the presentation. However, despite his spiraling anger at the innocent—yet obvious—suggestions, and despite the fact that his daughter wrecked his model, Tohiro persevered.

"Shall we begin?" Tohiro questioned in a clipped voice before the President could respond.

"Uh—sure," the President said.

When Kagome got home with her father, he ordered Maria to take her upstairs to her room and put her to bed for the evening. He was ignorant of her grumbling tummy, and her complaints for food went on deaf ears as far as he was concerned. Maria tucked Kagome into bed and read to her, leaving a sipping cup of water nearby as she always did.

After Maria had left, Kagome crawled out of bed and slid down the slide to the first floor, intent on finding a snack in the kitchen. She walked by her parents bedroom on the way to the kitchen and heard their argument, but didn't understand any of it.

She did understand the intent of it—her parents weren't happy about something. Was it her? Did she do something wrong?

"So how long has it been going on, Ai? Been sneaking around behind my back, huh? While I make money so you can live comfortably!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Like hell you don't! You know exactly what I'm talking about!"

"What is your problem, Tohiro?"

"My problem is that you've been sneaking around behind my back—with the _president_, no less!"

"And just who told you this?"

"What other reason would he have to 'come visit you'? You aren't getting out of this one. Answer the question!"

"You were at work with her, weren't you? I told you not to take her there!"

"And why not?"

"You work seven days a week; she barely even knows you. And the one day you do take her out, its just so you can go to work! What did you think I wouldn't know?"

"That presentation was important, Ai."

"Well, I hope you did well, because as far as I'm concerned, this conversation is over."

When Kagome started crying, that was when Maria showed up and picked her up, holding her close and rubbing her back. Maria took Kagome to the kitchen and settled her down with a bowl of sweet cream before tucking Kagome back into bed.

In her quiet voice, Maria asked, "You know your mother and father love you very much, right?"

"M-mama a-and p-papa are m-mad a-at m-me," Kagome sobbed, rubbing her eyes with her twiggy little hands.

"No, good heavens no they're not, child… They're just insecure." Kagome's wide blue eyes displayed her confusion. "You see, when two people love each other very much, they become afraid that someone else will love them better. So while your mother is so much younger than your father, your father fears that someone younger will catch your mother's eye and he will lose her. But don't you worry about a thing. They'll work things out on their own."

Kagome made a face. "I won't ever fall in love. That's for princesses anyway," Kagome said. Maria chuckled. "Maria?" Kagome asked.

"Yes, dear?" her nanny questioned.

"Do you love anyone?"

Her nanny looked thoughtful before nodding and tapping Kagome's nose. "I love you. That's why I always tell you to drink your milk and eat your vegetables." Kagome giggled and Maria tucked her in one last time. "Now, you stay in bed and get some rest. I'll take care of the fiend hunting tonight, but you'll have to pick back up tomorrow."

Kagome nodded and snuggled into her blankets. "Night-night, Maria."

"Goodnight, little warrioress."

* * *

**First of all, I have nothing but pure love and respect (hearts!) for Cross of Blades by Striking Falcon. Other than the fact that Kagome's name is Kagome, and I'm starting out with her at a young age, the similarities stop. **

**In The GF Mage: Kagome is complete and fully human, she wants to be a warrior, and she's a walking nightmare, quite obviously. **

**In Cross of Blades: Things are different than in this story.**

**This story (if you haven't guessed) starts to take place (around) 5 years after the downfall of Sorceress Adel. That means that I get the great joy of rewriting FF8... Even though the story will have something to do with guardian forces, I have a different aspect or view of it than Striking Falcon. **

**I hope you enjoyed chapter one. Please review!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: The GF Mage  
**Author: Tsubasa Kya  
_Disclaimer__: I own neither the "Inuyasha" universe, nor the world of "Final Fantasy". AU Inuyasha, AU FF8 (mainly because I'm not following FF8's story line). _

Chapter Two

As the days began to pass, there was a noticeable decrease in the presence of the head of the household. After her mother and father's argument, Kagome's father slowly stopped coming home at night which meant that Kagome could not see him off to work in the mornings.

At first he started to come home just once a week but after a few weeks those stops at home became once every two weeks just to give the house staff their paychecks. Eventually he stopped coming home at all which made Kagome cry when she heard two of the maids point that fact out to each other as they were cleaning one of the rooms.

Once she'd heard the maids say that, Kagome was later found sitting in the foyer, crying and waiting for her father to come home. Her mother found her like that when she came home from work that day and managed to pry Kagome's sob story from her. The next day the two chattering maids were identified and fired for their loose tongues and tension settled over the servants who worked in the Higurashi household.

The servants, fearing for their jobs after two were fired, became silent and subdued. Out of all of them, the only one who would talk around Kagome was Maria even though she still said very little. It became easy to tell when Kagome was in the room because people suddenly fell silent as though death had washed over the place.

The silence started to scare Kagome so it only took a few days before she was going far out of her way to avoid all the servants. It soon became easy to do when three tutors were hired by Kagome's father to start Kagome on her studies early.

Even for one so very young, at age four-and-one-half years old, it was learned that Kagome took well to the lessons she was given mostly because of—as the tutors put it—her "photographic memory". She was constantly praised by the tutors for being of "remarkable intelligence" which was "probably from her father".

Two months after Kagome's lessons began her mother came home early from work and excused the tutors early for the day. When Kagome asked why her teachers were leaving, her mother explained, "Because, darling, we are going on a special trip to visit some other children today. That's better than being cooped up in a chair, isn't it?"

Kagome thought for a moment before nodding. "Can I bring a toy?" she asked.

"I suppose, but only one, alright?"

Kagome nodded eagerly before racing out of her study room. Across the hall was her second floor playroom, so she dug eagerly through the mounds of toys trying to find the perfect one to take along. She decided on a butterfly catcher pole because that was the closest thing she could find to "sword-like" without taking too long.

Her smile was radiant as she raced back out of her toy room just in time to knock into her mother's legs. "Mama, mama, can I take this?" she asked.

Her mother laughed and scooped her child up, nodding in the interim. "Of course, darling. Now, come along… We don't want to be late, do we?"

Kagome shook her head emphatically and then allowed her mother to carry her into the elevator which the woman opened using her keycard. "Can I push the button, mama?" she asked. Her mother allowed her to push the button for the first floor and they descended slowly.

Waiting for them in the foyer was Maria with a large wicker basket in her hands. "Maria, Maria," Kagome called to her nanny, "we're going on a special trip! Do you want to come?"

Her mother and Maria both smiled at her before Maria said in her quiet voice, "Of course, child."

Kagome was happy her mother and her nanny were going on the special trip and soon they were in the car on their way. It didn't take long before Kagome was squirming in the car seat feeling trapped by the cross-shaped buckle that held her down.

Maria was prepared for such an occasion. She smiled at the child before pulling a book from her basket and Kagome squealed out laughter and clapped her hands when she saw the cover of it.

Kagome's mother chuckled. "You are too precious."

"Kiki! Kiki!" the young child called happily and Maria opened the book and started reading it.

By the time they got to the airport the young child had fallen asleep, so her mother carried her onto the awaiting airship. Maria followed behind with Kagome's butterfly net and the large wicker basket in hand. The rest of their traveling party was already waiting for them. The party consisted of several field experienced medical personnel and the president of Esthar himself.

Laguna saw the sleeping child and chuckled. "She seems excited," he teased Ai. The mother smiled in return.

They flew southwest over the ocean and the Centra Ruins to a secluded location where a lone building stood overlooking a field of flowers near a cliff on the sea. The airship landed in the field some distance from the building and Kagome's mother woke her up.

"Wake up, darling, we're here." Ai giggled.

The child pulled out of her dreams and rubbed her eyes blearily before shrieking in excitement over who's arm she had been using as a pillow. "'Guna!" she said, reaching out for him and wanting to give him wet smooches in greeting.

The president laughed at her antics and unbuckled her from the airship's seatbelts, scooping her into his arms and letting her plant sloppy kisses on his face. The child's mother smiled at the sight before moving to catch up with the other medical personnel present. Maria followed after the president as he headed for the exit of the ship.

Soon Kagome was jabbering away about how she recently battled six Blitz fiends all by herself and won. The president was a most attentive audience for the young girl at least until they heard a roaring noise. Looking ahead of them, the troupe was able to watch as a giant fire based creature rose into the air after a flaming ball.

"A fiend!" Kagome shrieked and struggled to get away from Laguna.

"Something isn't right," Laguna said, speaking the obvious as the doctors fell back by the president. Laguna pressed the child into her mother's arms and said, "Take her and go back to the ship with Maria."

Ai couldn't hold the wriggling child and stop the president at the same time; all she could do was call out in a plea, "Laguna, please! Don't go!"

Laguna was already ten feet away but he stopped and turned to look at her with an expression on his face that said 'don't argue with me'. "All of you! Get back to the ship, _now_. Have them call for Kiros and Ward. I mean it, Ai. _Go_."

Maria said, "My Lady, we should hurry to the ship."

Kagome still struggled to get away from her mother so she could go get the fiend. One of the other doctors assured Ai, "He defeated the cursed Sorceress Adel, madam, I doubt one measly Guardian Force is going to be a problem for him!"

And so the doctors tried to usher Ai back the other way, but the squirmy child finally managed to slip from her mother's grasp. She was fast—faster than the adults present were, at any rate, and took off toward that giant, blazing inferno the fiend was creating.

"Kagome, _no_!" Ai screamed and went after the child. She could barely see the tiny child; the wild flowers were all taller than Kagome stood. She followed Kagome by the appearance of the moving grasses. Kagome was following the sound of the noise.

It was surprising how fast the pudgy little child could be when she was chasing toward a fiend. Her mother was falling behind. One might say that her mother wasn't fit for such activities.

Kagome made it to the top of the hill and her mother lost sight of where she was. Kagome could hear her mother calling out for her, but she knew she had to continue forward and defeat the evil fiend. She wasn't afraid even slightly because she'd fought in many battles before and she was always the victor—she had no reason to be afraid.

She chased down the hill and soon the grasses and wild flowers became short enough for her mother to spot her and take off after her, calling her name. Kagome was already at the building, and the remains of dead fiends were everywhere.

For a moment she stared at the remains of a Jelleye, wondering why it was still there if it had been defeated and _what_ exactly it was. It wasn't a fiend she had learned about, and when she defeated fiends at her parent's mansion they would turn into dust and float away which was why she could never find the body even two seconds after their defeat.

She wasn't there for long though, because she heard the sound of a scream from inside the building. Thinking that a princess might be in trouble, Kagome quickly entered the building despite that her mother was screaming at her to stop and go back to her. Her mother was trying to convince her that she forgot her sword and should return to the ship for it, but Kagome wasn't listening.

She found her damsel in distress very quickly in the form of a young boy huddled in a corner of a dining hall. She knew the fiend that was poised to attack the boy: a Blitz fiend. She had defeated dozens of them at her house since the day she went to the museum with her father.

She grabbed the first thing she saw (a goblet from the table) and threw it at the beast. Momentarily distracted from the injured blond, the beast turned toward her. She clamored up onto the chair next to her and then onto the table, posing as she usually did when she confronted fiends at her house with her hands on her hips and her expression quite fierce for one so young.

"Hey! You evil monster!" she began to shout at the beast. Unfortunately she didn't know the difference between reality and imagination. The little boy opened his eyes and stared first at her, then at the fiend and back again before he took a chance and dashed toward a door. "I'm gonna defeat you!" Kagome yelled.

The beast moved toward her slowly and raised its sword. Kagome picked up the plate at her feet and tossed it at the Blitz's head. "Take _that_." Kagome cried and though the Blitz didn't flinch a bit, she charged at it ready to punch it.

"Kagome, _no!_" her mother cried as she finally caught up. Ai raced across the room and threw herself in the way of that descending and vicious looking double-pointed sword. She screamed in pain as the sword bit into her, leaving a wound down the front of her body from the right shoulder down to her left thigh. She fell back against the table, her blood everywhere.

"Mama!" Kagome cried as her mother fell. Kagome wasn't sure what just happened. It didn't make any sense to her that the fiend was still there; they always, _always_ disappeared when her mother or father came around. This one had not only _not_ disappeared, but it hurt her mother too.

Ai's blood had splashed on her daughter's face. She struggled to stay up; to stay in between her beloved child and the dangerous creature that sought only to destroy. She turned to her daughter, hissing as movement caused pain. "Mama, you have to go! I'm the warrior!" Kagome insisted.

Ai opened her mouth to talk, Kagome would never know Ai wanted to tell her to run, but the fiend attacked again. It cast a spell that formed a thunder cloud over Ai. A bolt of lightning struck Ai and she collapsed on the floor in a heap.

A cord snapped in the young child as she realized the fiend was going to win. Not only that, but the fiend had hurt her mother. Kagome clenched her fists and turned blazing eyes on the beast. "I hate you! **I hate you**!" she screamed and leapt from the table at the Blitz. It raised its sword to lay a killing blow on the berserk child.

At the very last second, Kagome was knocked out of the way as a body barreled into her. The bloody blade sliced through air and embedded into the table as two Kagomes crashed in a heap on the floor.

"Let me go, let me go! I have to defeat it! I hate it! I hate fiends! It hurt mama! _It hurt my mama!_" Kagome cried, struggling against the arms of the second Kagome, not even realizing the person holding her looked exactly like her.

"Damn, you're dumber than I thought!" the second Kagome snarled, dragging Kagome toward the door. She struggled for all she was worth. "What did you do, cast a berserker spell on yourself? Stop fighting me!"

Kagome did not. "Mama! Mama! Get up, _get up_! Let me go! Let me _go!_"

"Forget her! She wouldn't be hurt if you weren't a moron!" The other Kagome shoved the real one through the door to the next room and followed after, slamming the door shut behind her. She flipped the lock so the fiend couldn't get at them, but Kagome kicked her look-alike in the shin and reached for the door handle.

In the seconds that followed, there was a brief struggle as Kagome and her look-alike fought, one to keep the door closed and one to open the door and get back out. "Let go!" Kagome screamed as her look-alike gained the advantage and pinned her down.

"It will _kill_ you!" the second Kagome snarled as a sword began to hack through the door. "I'm trying to save you! Stop fighting me!" As the ugly child fought against her identical captor, they looked down at her in amazement before saying, "Gods… you _did_. You're berserk. I should have realized you wouldn't make this easy."

Almost as if she were possessed, Kagome growled, "Let me _go_."

"Hell no. You saved my life; I owe you. Then I can go home." Kagome's struggles came with renewed vigor when her captor released one of her hands, but after a few seconds the pudgy fingers of the other Kagome pressed on her own forehead and then on Kagome's forehead.

Kagome's eyes rolled for a moment and then she fell victim to the sleep spell cast on her. Her body became quite limp and the other Kagome dragged her across the room to the bed, rolling her underneath it. The other Kagome then stood up and readied herself for the inevitable breaking of the door. It happened quickly.

"I _hate_ Blitz fiends," the second Kagome growled before saying, "Hey, ugly! Come and get me, if you want me." She raced for the window and the Blitz followed mindlessly. Without concern for herself, the second Kagome broke through the glass and fell, wincing as she landed on broken glass.

The Blitz, however, was no longer taking the bait. It had been poised by the window, ready to go through it, when it suddenly turned back into the room. "Gods… don't tell me the bastard knows where she is…" The second Kagome rushed at the house and scrabbled up the wall. Her hands got cut open as she tried to reenter through the window.

The Blitz had found where she left the real Kagome because a scared little boy had also been under the bed. The bed was now overturned. The blond boy had an injury on his head now, on his left temple were deep gouges in his flesh. He was unconscious now as well.

Knowing she didn't have much time, the second Kagome cast a Thunder spell. The Blitz only absorbed the magic, but it did get its attention. "Exactly why I hate Blitz fiends!" groused the second Kagome. "That's right… come and get me…" She cast another Thunder spell; it hit the Blitz and was absorbed.

The Blitz again came at her. This time she tried to lead the Blitz out the door instead. It worked a lot better. The Blitz followed her out the door that led to the cliff. She wasn't sure why she hadn't taken the door to begin with because now she had to deal with glass in her shoulder, cut up hands, and a very sore ankle that was probably sprained.

Out on the cliff, a battle was taking place. Fiends were all over the place; some were Blitz fiends, but the majority of them were Death Claws, a monster with four sharp claws each extending on the end of a limb like an arm only with a deadly claw instead of a hand.

Children were everywhere, literally. Their bodies were cut in half and part of them would be in one place while the other was several feet away. In the midst of this battle—the main focus of the fiends' attack at the moment—were two humans, both male.

The second Kagome led the Blitz down to the cliff where the battle was taking place and ducked behind a boulder, hoping the Blitz wouldn't follow. Her hopes weren't dashed when the Blitz moved toward the major battle. That Kagome peered out from behind the rock at the fight.

She could recognize one of the men to be Laguna, the president of Esthar who—after much observation (she had spent plenty of time wandering around the Palace and watching the humans in their every day lives after Kagome released her)—was a fair sort of man.

Now, seeing him in battle, the second Kagome realized he was a dangerous human to be on the bad side of.

"What happened here?" Laguna shouted at his companion as he replaced the clip in his pistol.

"I don't know," the other man said. "We're the SeeD's assigned here to keep the orphanage safe from fiends." The other man cast a Water spell on a Blitz and then sliced it in half with his sword. "Balthier grew up here and said it would be an easy assignment because the fiends steer clear of Lady Sorceress Edea, the orphanage's matron."

"Vaan!" a busty woman called out, waving her arm for him. "Hurry! Balthier has the skiff waiting with the survivors."

The second Kagome glanced back at the building. They couldn't have gotten the ugly child out without her seeing, could they? And what about that young boy? Well, not that she cared particularly for the boy, but humans usually didn't leave behind young children in an evacuation.

"Did you find Zell?" The one named Vaan shouted back to her as he chopped off two claws on a Death Claw.

"No. We looked everywhere, Vaan. We need to get going or the injuries are going to kill the kids."

"Go on, Ashe! Tell Balthier I'm on my way. I need to find Zell!"

"I have an airship," Laguna said. "We can get on that." He littered a nearby Buel with bullets.

"Fine! Balthier isn't going to like this though," Ashe said. She took off down the hill before another word could be said to her.

The second Kagome wondered how the Buel fiends got to the area. She was pretty sure the closest place they could be found was in the Centra Ruins—and they couldn't fly across the sea.

But she couldn't just let them leave now. They had to find Kagome first. Still, she was drawing a blank as to how she could alert them to Kagome's presence. They wouldn't be able to see her.

The real Kagome brought the answer in the form of a berserk screech as she dashed out of the house. "Kagome, no! Stay there!" Laguna called to her, but the child ignored him and rushed into the battle. She was hit by a Death Claw's piercing limb. The claw stabbed into her pudgy little stomach and then the child was thrown to the ground like a used rag doll.

Vaan summoned a Guardian Force and the fiends immediately ignored the humans to attack the GF. Ifrit was running out of energy to fight in the battle, but he was able to distract the fiends long enough that Laguna and Vaan could escape the battle's center point. When Laguna picked up Kagome, the second one knew she had managed to do her self-set task and return the favor the little girl had done for her.

She dashed away from the battlefield before transforming into a lightning bolt and streaking toward the sky. Whatever came next wasn't her concern.

When the real Kagome woke up, she was in the hospital. The first thing she saw as she looked around was her father's exhausted personage. He was leaning against the metal arm bar on the bed, snoozing in what honestly couldn't be a very comfortable position—though the child wouldn't know it at the time.

"Pa-pa…" Kagome's voice was somewhat strangled and the child couldn't figure out why. She also couldn't figure out why her tummy hurt so much.

Her father jerked awake at the sound of her voice. "Kagome?" he asked. The metal bar had left its imprint on his forehead but he didn't care. Kagome stretched her arms toward her father, or she tried to, but the Velcro straps were tough enough to keep a four year old's arms in place.

"Eh… Let me go!" Kagome whimpered, trying to get away from the grasp of the fiend.

"Shh, shh, it's okay," her father began, not wanting her to stretch her injuries. "Just don't move, okay?"

Kagome sniffled. "My tummy hurts… I want my mama… I want Maria… owie…"

"Mama is fine; she just can't be here just now. Maria is at home. We'll see Maria when we go home, okay?" her father promised her. Tohiro was at a loss of how to explain things to Kagome.

"Mama got hurt," Kagome remembered immediately. "I have to defeat the fiends! They hurt mama!"

"Don't you worry," Tohiro continued in a soft voice. "Mama is going to be fine. She's sleeping just now, but she's alright. She'll be right as rain in the morning, as Grandma always said." He chose not to try explaining what happened. He assured himself, 'Someday.' That day was not going to come any time soon.

Despite the lies her father fed her that day in the hospital, Kagome's mother wasn't fine. She was alive, of course, but she was scarred horribly on her torso, hip, and back. After she had healed up, she chose her clothing with care.

Her father rejoined the family at home, but it would be talked about amongst the servants (provided Kagome was not present to hear) about how Tohiro and Ai were sleeping in separate bedrooms—indeed, on separate floors. Tohiro slept in his third floor office, on a folding bed.

When Ai was able to move on her own once more, she sought out her husband in his office. It seemed no matter what hour she caught him, he was always awake working. Coffee was his new best friend, and the office always smelled of it.

Maria was always with Kagome, reading books to her when her tutors weren't there and helping her with her reading and writing. She was the main person who kept Kagome from stretching the stitches in the first few weeks. The Death Claw had left a starburst shaped scar on Kagome's stomach that itched right before the rain would come.

Because Kagome was mostly confined to her room when they got home, and because her father had made the third floor office his main quarters, Kagome was unfortunately able to hear the arguments between her parents as they would shout in the room just down the hall. Even though Maria would close the door, the shouting would still drift in through the vents.

"If you weren't off cavorting with the president, she wouldn't have been hurt!" her father would yell.

"Cavorting? What in the name of all the Gods are you talking about, Tohiro?" her mother would cry in frustration.

"I'm talking about you, sneaking around behind my back with the president!"

"And what do you care what I do anyway? It isn't like you're ever around!" her mother would scream.

Her father would raise his voice right back. "I'm keeping this roof over your head!"

"Ha! As if you need the money!" Ai spat back angrily, "I didn't marry you for your good looks!"

"Oh, now we get to the truth of the matter!" her father yelled. "Do you want a divorce? Is that it? We'll see how much you get! You can't have a penny, or Kagome!"

Kagome was too young to understand the words behind the argument, but she could tell that her parents weren't happy and that made her curl up in her nanny's arms and cry. And since she was always mentioned in the arguments, she always felt even worse because she felt it was her fault her parents were unhappy.

It was several months later after one such argument, not three days after Kagome's fifth birthday that Kagome was huddled alone in her room. Her belly was itchy and she almost had it rubbed raw already.

Something hit her closed window shutters with a thud and she heard an annoyed grunting noise. Uncurling on her bed, Kagome looked toward the child-proofed window. She could open the shutters with a remote to let sun in; they were closed at the moment. She couldn't open the actual window any more than an inch however. It was her parents' ingenious method of keeping their daughter from falling out of a third story window.

Not to mention dozens of other parents' method as well; splattered child didn't make for great garden décor, unfortunately.

She wasn't a happy child, and the only one who seemed to notice was Maria. The day six months prior, the attack on the orphanage, gave her nightmares that no five year old should have to have. It didn't do anything to deter her from finding her imaginary fiends and rushing blindly to battle them. After that day, the imaginary fiends seemed to multiply; they were everywhere.

Kagome reached for the butterfly net she had been sleeping with for over a week and gripped it tight in her grubby little fingers, waiting for the fiend to come out. Instead of a fiend, she saw a bright flash of light that caused her to squeak and cover her eyes from the brightness.

When she looked again, she saw herself sitting on the end of her bed. She blinked at the 'other her' and then crawled out of the blankets—still gripping her net tight in one hand—and stared openly at the other girl. "I remember you," she started.

"Great. Then we're past the introductions." The other Kagome's pudgy cheeks lifted in a smirk.

"You're me." Kagome frowned. "But Maria says there's only one Kagome." It had taken Maria weeks to convince Kagome that there wasn't another little girl who looked just like her after the incident. "Who am I?" Kagome asked the other girl.

"You're you. I'm me. It's simple." The other girl said in response.

"But you're Kagome. There can't be two Kagome's. Maria says so." Kagome insisted.

"My name isn't Kagome. It's Hiten." Hiten said, flopping comfortably on Kagome's mattress. "You have a very big house you know."

"Papa built it," Kagome told the replica of herself with a smile before the smile disappeared.

"You're not happy," Hiten said knowingly. "Why not? You live in a huge house, you have your ma and pa, and you eat every day. Why aren't you happy?"

Kagome let go of her butterfly net and it fell onto the mattress. She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them, staring at the fresh blankets on the bed. Maria had just bought her new pink bed covers, but she didn't like them. "I made mama and papa sad. They don't like me."

"That's ridiculous, all parents like their kids." the girl huffed. "Even Mize likes me, and he's not my real pa. I just have to find him and my brother."

"Where do you find him?" Kagome asked.

"Obel Lake. It's near Timber, across the ocean, but I just stopped here to check on you before I go."

Kagome sniffed. "Mama and papa always yell. Today papa said he was going to work too, but he didn't come home."

Hiten frowned and sat up, crawling over to her and hugging her warmly. "My ma and pa yelled a lot too. Well, at least until they were slaughtered by Esthar Cyborg Soldiers. Then they just sort of lay there. Um, but you probably shouldn't hear that story. You're a bit young…" Kagome stared at the identical character. "Anyway, the thing about parents yelling all the time, that doesn't mean anything. You didn't make them yell. Big people just yell."

Almost as if cued by the two girls' conversation, the yelling began to drift in the room from the third floor hallway.

"You smell like a drunk, Tohiro! Coming home at four in the morning—"

"Back off, Ai. I don't need your ranting today!"

"And I don't need my daughter to smell someone else's perfume on you!"

"Perfume?! This smell is the chemicals from the lab! I need to use the chemicals in—"

"Right, chemicals! Ha! And you expect me to fall for that?"

"Just like you fall for the president, yes!" The adults' yelling faded. The elevator binged even as the office room door slammed. The two had gone separate ways.

Kagome whimpered and her look-alike hugged her tighter, pulling the blankets back up on Kagome's legs. "Come on, you." Hiten said. "Lay down and sleep." After a long moment, Hiten breathed a long sigh. "I don't know why I'm bothering with you. You're just human, after all."

Kagome asked, "How come you look like me but you aren't Kagome?"

"Because you see what you want to. It's a special magic spell Mize put on me." Hiten yawned.

"Are you tired?" Kagome asked.

"Yeah. I think I'll just nap." Hiten let her go and lay down in the bed. In seconds, the other girl was sleeping soundly, so Kagome curled up next to Hiten and tried to sleep. This time she fell asleep very quickly, but she still had nightmares.

This time when she started crying in her sleep, Hiten was there to wake her from her bad dream.

That seemed to be the start to a new routine. Hiten didn't exactly leave, but she was never there if Kagome was around other people. In the next few weeks after her birthday, Kagome was enrolled in her first year of private school (at the finest educational institution Esthar had to offer and highly recommended by all three of Kagome's tutors). There her teachers began to teach her things such as dancing, gymnastics, music, and cooking.

At first, her teachers wanted to recommend she be removed from the cooking classes, but her father was strict and refused to allow it (which resulted in another argument topic for the parents). Instead, her father insisted failure was not an option and that she would do nothing short of excelling in the class.

He seemed to forget that she was only five, and that dancing, gymnastics, music, and cooking were classes in addition to the regular schooling.

At night, she would eat dinner with her parents in a frigid silence not even a five year old would dare to break. After dinner, her mother would scowl at her father and usher her up to take a bath. After bath time, her mother would check her school work for errors while Maria read to Kagome about Priestess Kikyou.

Then at bed time, her mother and Maria would both leave her and Hiten would show up. Sometimes the other girl would crawl out from under the bed, sometimes out of the closet, and sometimes the other girl would just appear in a flash of light.

Hiten would sleep by her and Kagome would cuddle up to the other girl in her sleep. The new routine involved much less fiend hunting than Kagome was used to.

Winter didn't really hit Esthar much, but the later months in the year did get chilly at night so one evening after tucking Kagome in bed, Ai closed the windows in Kagome's room. That night, Hiten never came to bed.

The next morning, Kagome was found exhausted and crying in her bed. Maria asked the child what was wrong and Kagome said, "Hiten l-leaved me…"

Maria was under the impression that Hiten was just an imaginary friend of Kagome's. Nevertheless, the woman didn't miss a beat in explaining to Kagome that friends never really left. They just went away for a while from time to time.

Kagome didn't see it that way. Her childish mind began to think of Hiten as a fiend instead of a friend; nothing more than a monster to be defeated. Friends wouldn't hurt her and fiends already had.

As the days continued to pass and Kagome grew up, Maria was the only one who noticed the ugly child's determination to be a fighter grew stronger. She never complained about how the other children at her school picked on her for being so unsightly, but her parents were called in no less than twice a week to meet with the school's headmistress about Kagome's aggressive behavior. She lost her temper often with the other kids and would beat them up if they called her names.

She never made friends with the other students. After four weeks of parent teacher conferences, her father stopped going to them. After two months, her mother stopped going and simply sent Maria to them. Three months after enrolling in the school, Kagome was expelled on the grounds that "a fine institution such as Esthar Private Girls' Academy had no room for aggressive little girls—only fine young ladies".

The next option was a Boarding School many miles away as Kagome's father refused to let his daughter go to any ordinary or plain school. Kagome met the same fate there due to her aggressive temper and she was expelled after three months.

Four more private, upper class institutes resulted in four more expulsions before she was six years old. Her parents started to blame each other for Kagome's aggressive tendencies.

"She wouldn't be so mean if you were around more!" her mother would shriek.

Her father would respond with, "My fault? You think this is my fault? I'm not the one who slapped my mother at our wedding!"

"You said yourself you would have if you were there to hear what she was saying to me!"

"That was before I realized she was right about you all along!"

Hearing her parents arguing yet again, Kagome would run to her room and hide beneath the blankets. She started to cry, but no one heard her—not even Maria.

In the morning, Maria approached Ai as the young mother prepared herself for work. A man was with her. "Maria, I'll be late coming home so please be sure Kagome gets her bath."

Maria interrupted with a brief clearing of her throat. "If I may, my Lady?" she inquired.

Ai turned to the nanny and her eyebrow rose in surprise. "And who is this, Maria?" she asked, "I didn't realize we were expecting company."

"My Lady, I would like you to meet my son," Maria said with pride. "Basch."

Ai's other eyebrow rose as well. "And to what reason do I owe the honor?" she inquired.

"Kagome's schooling, my Lady." Ai's eyebrows came together in a frown and she crossed her arms over her chest, the white doctor's coat crunching up at the buttons. She said nothing, however, and Maria continued somewhat urgently. "My Lady, I know you want only the best for Kagome which is why I asked my son to come."

"Oh?" Ai glanced at Basch quite sternly and the man practically wilted under that brown eyed glare. "And what would you know about my child?" Her temper was riled even by such a simple, non-judgmental statement.

"Please, Lady Ai, do not be angry with me… All I ask is that you listen." Maria didn't make any mention about how she was becoming the only thing Kagome had in the household now that her parents were always arguing or off brooding at their separate work places. Ai had taken on full time work as a doctor and was working overtime now, doing exactly what Tohiro had done since before Kagome had been born.

"I am listening. Say your piece, Maria, before I lose my patience. I'm already late for work as it is."

Maria nodded and said, "My son is a SeeD, my Lady. SeeDs are mercenary warriors and my son went to the finest SeeD Academy in Galbadia." Basch sighed inaudibly and turned his eyes toward the window. "My Lady, I know you want what is best for her, and I know you always give her whatever her heart desires if it is within your power to do so. All Kagome wants is to be a warrior. You can give her that, my Lady. My son could take her to Galbadia Garden and she would receive not only the finest education possible, but her dreams as well!"

Ai grasped her purse and said, "I will think on it, Maria. In the meantime, make sure Kagome gets a bath before bed. I'll be late getting back tonight." With those words said, Ai shuffled out of the house.

Basch turned to his mother and said, "Galbadia Garden is the _only_ SeeD Academy in Galbadia… Why didn't you tell her?" Maria pinched her son's cheek with a smile.

"She will want to know more, my son. If I have learned anything in my long years, it is that you never butcher all your Cluckatrices at once. You would do well to remember that."

Basch soon learned that his mother was right. A few days later, Ai asked Maria if there was a way she could talk to Basch, to find out more about the Garden.

Not even a week after that, Kagome was privileged to watch her parents screaming at each other in the driveway from a window seat in her first floor toy room. The window was cracked open, filtering in the autumn air, and their voices.

For the first time in Kagome's young life, she was scared and clutching a stuffed bear as though it would offer her protection. The six year old child wanted to run, to hide, to be _anywhere_ except at home listening to her parents yelling about her; yelling _because_ of her.

"This is not debatable!" Tohiro screamed at his wife, enraged by what she was proposing. "No daughter of mine will be—will be a—a—_Mercenary!!_" He was so furious that he was spitting.

"And no daughter of mine will be denied her dreams!" Ai yelled right back at him.

"Her dream is to be a biologist, and so help me she will be the best damn biologist even if I have to lock her in a tower with a dozen of the finest tutors!"

"She doesn't want to be a biologist!" Ai told Tohiro in a voice that could certainly have been quieter. "She wants to fight fiends! She wants to be a warrior! It's all she has ever wanted and if you paid a little more attention to her, you might have even noticed this!"

Tohiro's whole body was tense. "I said _no_ and that's _final_. It's my money; she'll go to the school _I_ want her to go to!"

Ai pursed her lips before hissing, "Fine, then you can be the one to disappoint her!" She then lied rather baldly, "Because she already thinks she gets to go!"

Ai stormed away from Tohiro, leaving the estate through the smaller gate. Furious, Tohiro entered the mansion and snapped at the servants to locate his daughter immediately. One of them, terrified about losing her job, told him Kagome was in her first floor play room and he raged toward it.

Once he entered the room, he stopped and as he saw his daughter sitting in the window seat, crying her heart out. He noticed the cool breeze coming in through the partially opened windows, and realized that the window looked out onto where he had just been with his wife, arguing about Kagome.

He didn't realize Kagome was crying because she thought her parents hated her. He thought she actually understood their conversation and the words behind it. She didn't, she only knew the intent of it wasn't good and that made her sad.

But he thought she was disappointed, and that he had done it to her. No matter how much he was upset with Ai, he didn't like that Kagome was disappointed or sad. He wanted to make her feel better.

He was just an engineer; he knew the how and the why to nearly _every_thing—except children and wives. But he knew he hated for Kagome to be hurting so badly. His heart wrenched at the sight of her.

"Kagome?" he asked hesitantly, shuffling from one foot to the other and poking his forefingers together.

The child flinched and hugged her stuffed animal tighter. "I'm sorry, papa, I'm sorry," she cried piteously. Crying caused her already disturbing countenance to be even more wretched.

Hearing her apologize to him made him feel as though he'd been slapped in the face with an anvil. In an instant, he was across the room kneeling before her. He grabbed her tiny, pudgy little hands in his stringy grasp. "Don't cry, Kagome." He pleaded, "You don't have to be sorry for anything."

"Y-you h-hate m-me," Kagome whined.

Tohiro immediately shook his head. "No! No, I don't hate you. I love you more than anything! You're my beautiful daughter—I even had paternity tests done to confirm this. If your mother did anything right in her life, it was you. Oh, don't cry…"

Kagome sniffed. She didn't understand everything he said, but she understood his declaration of love and it made the child feel a little better—a bit reassured. "Really? You love me, papa?" she asked.

Tohiro nodded emphatically, so much that his glasses slid down his nose. He pressed them up his nose. "Yes, yes I do… Do you really want to be a mercenary, Kagome?"

Kagome pulled her hands away from her father's grip to rub her wet eyes. She sniffed away the last vestiges of her tears and asked, "What's a mercenary, papa?"

Tohiro thought about how Ai had spoken of the SeeD job and replied, "A warrior, Kagome."

He watched Kagome's face light up as though she'd been given the greatest gift in the whole world. "I'm gonna be the best warrior ever! I'm gonna use a sword and chop up all the monsters! And someday, I'm gonna find the one that hurt mama, and I'm gonna chop it up into bitty bits!"

Tohiro couldn't tell her no… He wanted to; he didn't like the idea of her getting hurt or even being in a remote sense of danger, but Ai knew him too well. He could no more say no to Kagome than she could. He stood up and nodded in determination. "Well, then I have some research to do," he told his daughter. "And you, young lady, have your own researching to do as well."

Kagome glanced at him in confusion. "Papa?" she asked.

"Well? Up, then. No daughter of mine will be unprepared. Being a mercen—uh, warrior, isn't going to be easy work. It's a big job. From now on, no more toys." Kagome's eyes went wide and filled with tears instantly, but Tohiro clucked his tongue. "No more crying either. Warriors don't cry." Her lip wobbled. Tohiro backtracked. "What I mean is we have to replace all these toys with tools of the warrior trade!"

"Tools? Like papa's yard stick and screw drivers?"

Tohiro nodded. "Yes, like those. In order to be the best warrior, you'll want to learn everything you can. Perfection is a key to survival, and knowing your enemy will keep you alive. That's lesson one. Got it?"

"Uh huh!" Kagome saluted her father and tossed the stuffed animal away from her. "I need to find the perfect enemy to keep alive!" Tohiro's lips flapped similarly to a fish's as he tried to figure out how Kagome twisted his words so badly. Kagome asked innocently, "How do I know what enemy to keep alive?"

"Uh… I suppose we'll come back to this lesson when you're older. Before then, let's go find a servant and get the toy rooms emptied…" He picked up his daughter and to Kagome, the world had gotten brighter. Her father was with her, and that didn't always happen.

"What kind of tools does a warrior get? Will you buy me a sword, papa?"

He winced. His first instinct was to say 'no'. Instead, he said, "Um, maybe when you're a bit taller…"

She accepted that response. "I can't wait to grow tall like you, papa. Then I'll have a sword and chop up all the fiends in the whole wide world!"

Tohiro winced yet again. 'Dear heavens, I hope this doesn't backfire on me one day,' he thought.

In a matter of days, Kagome's play rooms were transformed into the perfect rooms, engineered for nothing short of high quality exercise and training. Tohiro himself had taken vacation time from work to engineer the training rooms. He paid builders to come renovate, and then used his connections to get military class equipment and hired incredibly qualified trainers and tutors to start Kagome on her schooling and lessons.

He expected nothing less than perfection from his daughter. All he got was reports of a dangerous lack in aptitude from her physical trainers. He would lecture her on how the greatest warrior had to be great at everything. He wasn't sure if she understood him, because she would nod her head eagerly and then ask if she could go back to beating up fiends.

Tohiro did get praise for Kagome's wonderful intelligence, however. Where she seemed to fail at hand-to-hand combat, she made leaps and bounds in reading. Where she broke her trainer's pinky finger with a practice sword, she was incredible at calculations.

Of course, December came, and with it the arguments between Ai and Tohiro started again. The six and a half year old child tried her hardest to be the best daughter in the whole world, but no matter what she did it seemed her mother and father would always be unhappy. It made her feel sad and lonely, and despite how angry she still was at the other girl, Kagome began to miss Hiten.

"The point wasn't to turn Kagome into some sort of vigilante, Tohiro!" her mother yelled in the dining room one evening. "The point was to get her the proper training at the SeeD Academy in Galbadia!"

"She'll be enrolled this spring at Trabia Garden," Tohiro growled back. "They have a fine institute, and they're _closer_."

"They're also engulfed in snow! Tell him, Kagome!" Ai snapped at the little girl without really meaning to. "Tell him you hate snow."

"Kagome loves snow," her father insisted. "Go on, Kagome, tell your mother; you love snow, right?"

Kagome bit her lip and stared at her plate, trying not to cry. Warriors didn't cry, her father told her. She glanced up at her parents, took note of how they both were glaring at her (although she didn't realize they were only angry at each other and not her), and said, "Bath time!" she climbed off her chair and ran out of the room.

"Look what you've _done_," her mother accused Tohiro.

"What I did? You're the one who did it! You scared her off with your talk about vigilantes and Galbadia! That country is a horrible place!"

"It is not! I'm from Galbadia!"

"A city bred slut from lo-town." Tohiro sneered. Ai's famous temper flared that night and she slapped her husband.

"Get out." She told him coldly.

"This is my house!" he said, rubbing his cheek. "You can't throw me out of my own house!"

"_Can't_ I?" she questioned. He debated momentarily at whether or not she was trying to bluff. "_Get out of here!_" she screamed. "Out! Get _out_!"

Tohiro stormed out. He didn't return for a week.

In January, Kagome was awake early one morning reading her Priestess Kikyou book all on her own. She usually woke up early; it was her favorite time of the day. She would sit atop her desk with her legs crossed, reading by the light from the desk lamp, now that she knew how. The morning quickly became special when there was a tapping on the window.

_Click. Click. Click. _

It was like a stone hitting the window pane. She pressed her nose to the window, trying to see who was out there. She couldn't see anything; it was too dark out still. The tapping continued, slowly, rhythmically.

_Click. Click. Click._

She set her book aside and stood up, flipping the lock on the window and pushing it up as far as she could. It still had child safety locks, so she couldn't open it very far. She knelt to yell at the _whatever_ that was tapping, but was almost blinded by a bright flash of light.

When her vision returned, she saw Hiten. The other her was still an exact mirror image of her. Kagome grew frustrated and angry to see Hiten. "You—you… _monster!_" she yelled and rushed at Hiten, ready to hit the other girl. The idea wasn't as smart as she had intended for, as the ugly child tripped on the book she'd been reading and began tumbling to the floor.

Hiten cushioned her fall. "Geez, you're a lot of trouble. I don't know why I came back." Hiten groaned.

"You went away!" Kagome yelled, and then she sniffled as it settled in that her friend came back just as Maria had said Hiten would. "Why did you go away?" she cried, clutching the other girl tightly.

"I had to. I had to find my brother." Hiten told her. Hiten hugged her with a goofy grin and kissed her forehead. "Besides… I can always find you again."

"B-but I couldn't find you!" Kagome whined.

Hiten giggled. "Aww, don't worry. Even if you can't find me… I'll find you. Though the heavens explain _why_. I sure don't know."

Hiten had returned into Kagome's life, and it was almost like the other girl had never left.

Just like Tohiro had said, when spring came, so did Kagome's enrollment at Trabia Garden. Kagome was excited to go to a school where she would learn to be a warrior. Hiten was playing with a knife and a large yellow tourmaline gem. It was very sparkly and the gem kept distracting the other little girl. Hiten would use the knife to cut away at the gem as if it were nothing more than soap, but Hiten wouldn't tell Kagome what she was making.

"So where are we heading again?" Hiten asked, swinging her legs over the edge of the desk and brushing the gem shavings off her legs.

"Papa is taking me to a special school so I can learn to be a warrior! I'm going to be the best ever and chop up _all_ the fiends in the _whole_ world." Kagome boasted.

Hiten quirked an eyebrow at the back of the little girl. "Uh _huh_… Look out for that"—Kagome tripped over a shoe she had meant to put in her suitcase. "Too late," Hiten snickered. "Yes, I see a great warrior in you."

Kagome missed the sarcasm. Instead, she picked up her shoe and put it in her suitcase. Her mother had asked Kagome if she wanted help packing her suitcase, but after Kagome screamed ten times she wanted to pack only with Hiten, Ai decided not to press further.

"I should"—Kagome began, looking around her room for more things to try fitting in her already overloaded suitcase.

Hiten interrupted, "Try packing lighter. What school are we going to?"

"Papa says Trabia Garden. Mama says there's lots of snow. I can make snowballs and throw them at people!"

Hiten rolled her eyes. "If you can find another person up there to throw it at," she groused. She put knife in the sheath at her waist and the yellow tourmaline in her pocket. She jumped off the desk she'd been using as a seat and went over to the suitcase. "Here, I'll help you out." She began tossing things out of the suitcase that Kagome wouldn't need, and folded the things Kagome would do well having so they took up less space, having to search Kagome's room for a few items.

"But I need a blanket!" Kagome insisted. "What will I sleep with otherwise!"

"They'll give you blankets there. Do you really want to be picked on for having a pink blanket?" Kagome shook her head. "Then leave that here."

"I need shoes," Kagome insisted.

"Do you want to be fashionable, or sensible?" Hiten asked.

"Um…"

"I'll make it easier for you," Hiten offered, "you're going to be really cold up there; you want fur lined boots and wool stockings, like these. You don't need to look pretty. You need to be warm." Hiten grinned cheekily and then grabbed Kagome and hugged her. "Besides that, you're like my brother."

Kagome hugged her look-alike right back but was confused. "What's your brother like?" she asked.

"He's an ugly duckling," Hiten said. "Like you."

Kagome glared at Hiten and shoved the other girl, immediately upset. "I'm not ugly!" she snapped.

Hiten giggled and swiped the feet from beneath Kagome. The ugly girl fell on her rotund bottom. "I didn't say you were. I said you were a swan. Really, read the story some time. My ma always read it to us. It was my brother's favorite."

In a blinding flash, Hiten disappeared not a moment too soon because Maria entered the bedroom to check on Kagome. "Goodness gracious, darling, what in heaven's name are you doing?" Maria asked. "I thought you said you would be all packed by now. Tut tut," Maria clucked. She walked over and peered in the suitcase and her eyebrows rose in surprise at the neatness of it. She checked through it. "Hmm… That certainly does look like everything…"

Kagome got to her feet and threw her lips out in a pout. "Maria, do you know the ugly duckling story?" she asked.

Maria blinked at Kagome in further surprise before closing the neat little suitcase. "Of course, my dear. Would you like me to tell it to you?"

"No, I wanna read it myself. Hiten said to read it, not listen to it."

Maria's eyes went wide before a minute frown crossed her brow. "Alright. I'll see if there's a fairy tale book in the library before we go."

Maria picked up Kagome's suit case and Kagome hopped toward the door. As Maria turned to leave the room, she noticed a glimmering from the floor by the desk. She walked over to investigate it and picked up several gem shavings; each of them was curled perfectly as if they were shavings of wood.

"Come on, Maria," Kagome giggled from the hallway. "I'm going to school again!"

Maria put the strange shavings in her pocket to deliberate on later and clucked her tongue. "Patience, my dear. Patience."

"I'm gonna push all the elevator buttons!" Kagome giggled.

Maria followed the child to the elevator and ended up waiting for the elevator to stop at each floor before they made it to the first floor. True to her word, Maria detoured from the elevator to the foyer through the library and they found the story of the Ugly Duckling.

Her mother and father both glared at each other the whole way but they accompanied her on her way to Trabia and helped her to get settled in her room.

When she saw three other beds in her room aside from her own, she asked her parents innocently, "Why do I have four beds? I only need one…"

Her mother pursed her lips and said, "Because your father wants you to go to a school that won't give you your own room."

Tohiro ground out, "I already told you why she's coming here. I like their curriculum enough that it doesn't matter if Kagome has to share a room."

Kagome tugged her suitcase from her father's hand and dragged it across the room, trying to ignore her parents arguing. The little girl remembered what Hiten said. Her parents would take her to the school and they would have to leave her there, just like the boarding schools she'd gone to. That wasn't so bad—she wouldn't have to listen to the arguing anymore.

Just as Hiten had predicted, and just like had always happened when she went to a new boarding school, her parents had to say goodbye soon so they could get back to Esthar. Kagome met her room buddies but clashed heads with all three of them. Ayame, Eri, and Yuka all laughed at her for being ugly, which got her temper flaring quickly.

She ended up learning to shovel snow her first day because she beat up her roommates.

Classes began soon after she arrived. It was mostly the same thing she had been doing with her trainers with a few additions: cooking, cleaning, and music. A SeeD had to be good at everything, her teachers would say.

Ayame, Eri, and Yuka were always causing trouble for Kagome. They would trip her in the mess hall, and distract her in class. They were popular and pretty, and she was just the ugly duckling.

Every night she would read the Ugly Duckling instead of Priestess Kikyou. She really missed Hiten, but the other girl was never around despite the promise to follow her to Trabia. Then after getting into trouble for the twenty-eighth time in one month, Hiten showed up when Kagome was stuck shoveling snow.

"Do you know how hard it was to get here?" Hiten complained. "These mountains are confusing; I got lost in them and I'm pretty damn sure I'll never be able to get out of them again." Hiten took a good look at the bundled child and blinked at the shovel. "What are you doing?"

"I was naughty," Kagome explained with a pout, "so I have to push snow."

"I'd just melt it if it were me. A quick Fire spell and it would be done." Hiten looked around them. "How much do you have to shovel?"

"I get to go back in when Instructor Tat comes and gets me, but I don't think he's ever gonna come." Kagome threw her lip out in a pout. "It's not fair; they started it, why am I always the one to get in trouble?"

"That's irresponsible of them to leave you out here alone…" The other girl muttered. "What happened?" Hiten then asked.

"Eri called me fat and Yuka called me ugly so I hit them. Ayame tattled. I don't think they'll make very good warriors like me. They're not strong like me." Kagome said with a degree of certainty.

Hiten grinned. "Don't worry about them, okay? You're an ugly duckling; when you get bigger, you'll be a swan."

Kagome beamed at Hiten as she remembered the story. "Yup!" she agreed.

"Man, I'm beat," Hiten then complained. "Here, I'll just melt the snow for you and you can show me where we're gonna bunk."

"Okay!" Kagome chirped. Not a moment later, Hiten's Fire spell had created a flooded mess of the courtyard. Kagome dropped her shovel and half dragged Hiten toward the building.

They had just entered the Garden through one door when Kagome's Instructor came looking for her. He had only been gone for six minutes. He panicked upon seeing the standing water and the discarded shovel. Very quickly the manhunt began for the missing child. It wasn't until _after_ they called Kagome's parents to alert them to the situation that they thought to look in Kagome's room.

There she was, sleeping soundly.

Unfortunately the damage was done; Kagome's mother immediately set out to remove Kagome from that school. President Laguna himself escorted Ai on a private airship to Trabia Garden. Never before had the military school officials known what it was like to be truly chewed up and spat out before Ai got to them. Her famous temper left their lips flapping for days.

In the meantime, Kagome ended up going back home but her mother promised she would go to an even better warrior school soon. In April, as her mother promised, Kagome was enrolled in Galbadia Garden. She did have her own room this time. It was the same as all the other schools she went to in regards to the teasing however, and Hiten wasn't around to keep her company. She hadn't seen Hiten since she melted the snow in Trabia Garden and began to worry that she got stuck in the mountains like she said she would.

The students picked on Kagome because she was pudgy and unsightly, and the instructors didn't enjoy teaching Kagome in the gym because she was wretched at _everything_. They soon learned if they stuck anything in her hands she would start smashing at things wildly if she was angered and the damages she caused was strangely phenomenal. They were at a loss at trying to teach her.

However, her classroom instructors thought she was just an absolute delight in class. She seemed to absorb whatever knowledge they gave her and always wanted more. She had questions, they had answers. They bemoaned that the rest of their students weren't the same and tried to push Kagome's intellect further, to give her more challenging assignments than the rest.

Hiten finally showed up in a blinding flash one day while Kagome was in her room dancing in circles with a stuffed bear her mother had sent to her in the mail. The young child had been told by her dance instructor that SeeD's had to attend social balls from time to time and if she didn't start practicing her steps, she would be in big trouble. That was what she was trying to do when Hiten came.

With a raised eyebrow, Hiten asked, "What the hell are you doing?"

The nearly-seven-year-old panted, "Evening practice. Papa says I can't be the best warrior unless I'm the best at everything, even dancing, and Instructor Nott says I need to practice dancing 'cause I'm bad at it. I don't want to be bad at anything."

"I didn't know ugly ducklings danced," Hiten giggled.

Kagome stopped and looked at Hiten before smiling broadly. "You came!" she chirped. "I thought you were lost."

Hiten said, "I told you I can always find you." She climbed onto Kagome's desk and sat atop it, pulling out the yellow tourmaline from her pocket and unsheathing her knife. She began carving away at the jewel again. It had lost quite a lot of its shape since the last time Kagome saw it months ago, but she didn't notice.

"What are you making?" Kagome asked.

"An enchanted pendant. I wanted Mize to do it, but he said 'magic is strongest when it comes from the heart'." Hiten huffed and rolled her eyes. "He's just lazy."

"I don't like magic," Kagome said. "Magic is for girls."

"No it isn't," Hiten said immediately and somewhat defensively. "I'm not a girl and I use magic all the time!"

Kagome blinked at her friend. "But you look just like me, so you have to be a girl," she said in confusion.

Hiten lifted her bangs and Kagome saw three sparkly jewels in the center of the girl's forehead. All of them were diamonds and glimmered beautifully. The centermost diamond was diamond shaped placed vertically in her forehead, the two on either side were smaller and triangle in shape with the base lining up perfectly with the upper slants of the diamond.

"See these?" Hiten asked and Kagome nodded.

"They're pretty," Kagome said.

"They keep Mize's spell in place so that everyone who looks at me sees what they want to see. Most people don't want to see me, so they won't be able to. That's why I look like a girl to you, because of magic!" Hiten let go of his hair and it fell back into place.

A look of excitement crossed Kagome's features and she said, "If you're a boy, then you can dance with me!"

Hiten's expression was one of revulsion. "Spin around in mad circles, you mean. You're nuts if you think I'm doing that."

"But I have to practice," Kagome whined, "and it's too hard with this dumb bear." She tossed the bear across the room.

"I don't care," said the look-alike. Kagome stomped across the room and hit Hiten's leg with her tiny fist. "Owie! What was that for?" Hiten asked.

"Dance with me!" Kagome ordered.

Hiten put the jewel back in his pocket and his knife away. "I can't!"

"Why not?" Kagome demanded.

Hiten huffed loudly, "I don't know how, okay?"

Kagome pouted. "Me neither. That's why I have to practice. Papa says I have to be good at everything if I'm going to be the best. But I don't like dancing. It's for girls."

Hiten asked, "Why do you always say you don't like things because they're for girls?"

"Girly things are for princesses, and I'm not a princess. I'm a warrior!" Kagome said immediately. "I'm gonna practice really hard and get a sword and chop up all the monsters everywhere!"

Hiten rolled his eyes. "So you've told me, many times."

Kagome chirped, "You should learn to fight with a sword too. Then we can go fight all the monsters together!"

"But I don't like swords. I like magic." Hiten pointed out.

Her mother and father came to pick her up for summer break in June, and that was when the headmaster of the academy asked to speak with them. "I'm sorry," he said, "but we really can't keep teaching Kagome."

Shocked at this news, Tohiro demanded to know why. "Kagome is the best student here! Why won't you teach her?"

"Because," the headmaster explained calmly, "Kagome is not the best student. In fact, if I were to be completely honest with you, she's probably the worst cadet this school has ever seen."

Ai hissed, "How dare you say that about my Kagome! She is nothing short of perfect!"

The headmaster raised an eyebrow at the pair and then glanced at the little girl who had wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in her knees as though to hide. "I'm sure you would like to believe Kagome is perfect, but she's not. While it is true that her classroom grades are nothing short of phenomenal for a child so young, she lacks something very important to a SeeD."

"My Kagome lacks _nothing_." Tohiro snapped.

"I'd love to believe you, but I've seen it myself. She lacks control, and aptitude for combat. Our instructors have worked with her these past few months and," Ai interrupted.

"She's only been here for a few months; you can't possibly tell if she has a propensity for combat already. Besides! She's still young; she can be trained!"

"We've been training SeeD's for over a decade, madam. After daily training, students receiving less attention than she has from the instructors are exceeding her in combat skills. SeeD's rely on combat skills more than where Fastitocalon-F's make their natural habitat." The headmaster said.

Kagome piped up immediately, "On every shore and in the Dingo Desert in Galbadia." The immediate silence in the room caused Kagome to clam up and put her head back down, fearing she had done something wrong.

"As I was saying," the headmaster continued, "she has no control over herself. We generally like to allow the cadets to partner off to practice in the training yards because we don't have enough instructors for every cadet. More often than not, when Kagome starts fighting, she doesn't stop."

Tohiro crossed his arms in anger. "What are you getting at?"

"Let me put it simpler for you." The headmaster indulged the angry parents. "In the training hall, we paired Kagome up with another cadet to practice basic sword maneuvers. The routine is very simple; one cadet would practice a high block while the other would practice a high strike and then the cadets would switch tasks. The moment Kagome's wooden sword met her partner's she started to attack the student without coordination or sense to her attacks and wouldn't stop until we physically pulled her away. Even then, she struggled to get at the cadet."

"My child would never do that!" Ai said, quite insulted by the allegation—whether or not it was true wasn't important to Ai.

"She did. I realize it upsets you to have to hear this, but I, and my instructors agree with me, do not believe Kagome should be a SeeD. She would do well as a biologist, or perhaps a geologist. Even a mathematician career path would suit her well, and that's her biggest classroom struggle."

Although the headmaster was trying to give the parents alternate options, they wanted to hear none of it and he could tell that. His words alone were not enough to deter them from allowing Kagome on her chosen career path. He had known before he even talked to them what their reaction would be, but he still had to try.

With a deep sigh, he said, "I suppose if you are determined to see Kagome down this path, I might have a suggestion for you…"

Tohiro demanded, "Speak up then."

"In exchange for my taking on a few charity cadets, an old friend of mine owes me a favor. I might be persuaded to talk to him for you, see if he can help you at all." The headmaster trailed off, watching the parents for any sort of reaction.

Ai and Tohiro were equally skeptical. "And what would this friend be able to do?" Tohiro asked.

"Cid is the headmaster and co-founder of Balamb SeeD Academy. It was Cid and his wife who originally came up with the idea of SeeD's, and Balamb Academy was the very first to be built."

When Kagome realized they were taking her out of yet another school, she began crying. When they got home, Kagome holed herself up in her room and refused to come out. When her parents simply unlocked the door to try to talk to her, she didn't listen. She zoomed down the slide. She knew where all the hiding places where in the mansion, and she knew where she had to go to escape her father and not be cornered, as he knew the mansion like the back of his hand because he designed it.

In the morning, Hiten had found her hiding in a cupboard. Hiten sat down with her among the brooms and yawned. "Hello, ugly duckling. You move around a lot," Hiten said.

"Mama's school won't let me come back. Now I'll never be a warrior," Kagome sobbed into her knees.

Hiten moved over to her side of the cupboard and wrapped his equally pudgy looking arms around her shoulders. She cried into her look-alike's shirt. "You have to be a warrior. I don't want to have stolen a sword for nothing!"

Kagome hiccupped. "Stealing is bad," she told Hiten. "Only monsters steal."

"What was I supposed to do," Hiten asked her, "I'm just a kid! Even if I had the Gil to pay for it, they wouldn't sell it to me. It was just a cheap one anyway."

"But stealing is bad!" Kagome insisted.

"Well, then I'm a monster. Are you gonna chop me up for it?" Hiten sneered at her, shoving her and disappearing in a flash of blinding light.

Kagome cried noisily after his departure. "No, Hiten! Come back! You're not a monster! You're a boy and I love you!"

Maria found her in the cupboard and cleaned her up, asking Kagome what was wrong. Kagome immediately blurted out everything. Once Kagome was cleaned up and had eaten something, Maria left Kagome with another servant in the kitchen and set out to find the lady of the house.

Hiten didn't come back for a month after that argument. Kagome hated being at home. She wanted to go to school. Maria explained that she had to wait for summer break to be over before she could go back, but she didn't want to.

When Hiten did return, it was on July twenty third, Kagome's birthday. Just as Hiten was about to climb up onto the bed and curl up next to the sleeping Kagome, the door opened. Surprised, he stayed very still and hoped the adult wouldn't be able to see him.

To his relief, the adult, Kagome's mother, looked all around the room but didn't see him. However, she said, "I know you're here." She spoke quietly because Kagome was a light sleeper.

Hiten tensed up, not sure if he should respond.

"You're real, aren't you, Hiten?" Ai asked. "You're not just Kagome's imaginary friend, are you?" Still, Hiten said nothing and just worried at his lip. "I saw the flash of light from the crack beneath the door. Who are you? What are you? What do you want with my daughter?"

Hiten asked, "Ever hear of fiends?"

The woman's expression became wide-eyed with fear. "Of course…" she said hesitantly. Hiten gave her credit for not running away.

"That's me."

"So what do you want with my daughter?" she was less certain now.

Hiten growled, "What do you care?"

"She's my daughter!" Ai tried to keep her voice quiet, but Kagome shifted in her sleep.

"She's _my_ friend!" Hiten snapped. "I know her better than you ever will, you old hag."

Ai said, "If she is your friend, you must leave her be. She's suffering because of you. Because of you, she can't go to school. If you really care about her, you'll leave her alone and you won't come back. Do you think she'd like you if she knew what you were?"

Hiten fell silent and looked at the sleeping child. He realized Ai was right; Kagome would hate him if she ever knew. He changed his mind and instead of climbing up onto the bed, he pulled out a small, enchanted item from his pocket and gently placed it on Kagome's pillow. When he let go of it, it became visible to Ai.

He leaned on the bed and whispered to Kagome, "I'll find you again someday, ugly duckling. I love you..." Hiten kissed her cheek and then in a blinding flash, he disappeared.

Ai waited a moment before approaching the bed and her sleeping child. She looked at the item for a long moment before taking out a kerchief and using that to pick up the item. She folded it in the kerchief and stuck it in her pocket, certain she would never let Kagome have it.

At the start of August, Ai and Tohiro proceeded to Balamb Garden with Kagome after receiving word from Headmaster Cid that the school would do everything in its ability to teach Kagome.

**I don't know about being a god, but thanks for the confidence in my writing--that's always a boost.**


	3. Chapter 3

**The GF Mage  
TK  
I don't own anything FF, it belongs to SquareEnix. I do not own anything Inuyasha, it belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. **

**Chapter 3**

Seven year old Kagome was _very_ excited; she was going on a _train_. She'd never been on a train before, and yet, there she was at a train platform in the middle of nowhere. They had taken a private plane out of Esthar City and down to a remote, yet still decent enough sized city to warrant an airport. From there, she and her parents boarded a ship and stayed on the boat for four whole days, landing and traveling to the remote platform they were at, waiting for the train to arrive. It came right on schedule and they boarded, with Tohiro paying for the three tickets that would take them to Balamb.

Tohiro paid for a first class cabin and led the way to it; soon Kagome was enjoying the delightful sugar filled snacks and drinks that the cabin held while her parents ignored her to favor checking their hair (in her mother's case) and reading over some important looking documents (in her father's case).

They rode the train for hours before arriving in Timber. Kagome had, by that time, had so much sugar her parents could hardly contain her and—after they got off the train—they managed to lose Kagome in the crowd. Both parents panicked and blamed each other, but still managed to go looking for their daughter.

Kagome hadn't seen anything wrong with racing ahead of her parents. They were always slowpokes anyway, and all they did was argue so the more time Kagome spent away from the tension between the adults the happier she became.

She was delighted by the places she saw in the city; it was made even more special because she didn't have to listen to her parents while she looked around. She found a tiny, abandoned litter of kittens after chasing around the city for a long time. Only one of them was still moving, and it made her both sad and curious why the others wouldn't. All of them had two tiny tails.

Ai and Tohiro found Kagome before the child could touch the tiny creature, and Kagome made quite a raucous as they took her away from the kitten. "Mine!" she screamed, trying to get back to the little white creature.

They had to deal with Kagome as she threw a tantrum on the train to Balamb after that, but thankfully she soon came down from her sugar rush and lay down on the bed in the cabin, napping most quietly.

Ai woke Kagome when they arrived in Balamb and once they had gotten off the train they made their way to first the car rental shop (which Tohiro was less-than-pleased to find out his options for renting) and soon were on their way to Garden. While the rental agent drove them (it would be beneath Kagome's parents to actually drive themselves) Tohiro called Headmaster Cid and told the man they would arrive shortly. Without further incident, they arrived at their final destination.

Headmaster Cid himself stood waiting for them at the front gates with four junior cadets waiting to unload Kagome's luggage. Cid was surprised when the rental agent took out a single wheeled suitcase from the trunk and Kagome skillfully pulled up the handle and started trailing it behind her, snapping her teeth at the junior cadets when they offered to take it from her.

Cid asked curiously, "Is there more in the car?" he chuckled, "My cadets could—"

Ai firmly cut off the headmaster, replying, "Kagome has everything she needs and wants within that suitcase." After going to so many different schools, Kagome's attachment to the majority of her material belongings had ceased. The only two things she still kept with her from school to school was Kikyou, the Warrior Priestess children's tale, and The Ugly Duckling story. Both books were small, practically weightless, and she took them to school with her.

Kagome approached Cid and beamed up at him. "Are you my new school teacher?" she asked him, to which he chuckled again warmly, peering down at her through his spectacles.

"Unfortunately I am not a teacher, but I do have many who will be teaching you. You'll learn many things here, Kagome, my dear." He told her. He patted her on the head; an action that caused her to giggle, and then turned to her parents once more. "I am Headmaster Cid."

"We may forgo the introductions," Tohiro said with pursed lips. "I have to be returning."

Ai glared at her husband. "Don't be so discourteous, Tohiro! This is Kagome's future; I want to be absolutely certain this facility is capable of taking care of _my_ daughter _before_ I leave her here." Tohiro scowled and pressed his glasses up his long nose. Ai told Cid, "We would like a tour first."

Cid nodded, smiling and not mentioning anything about the obvious tension between the young wife and her much older husband. "Right this way, please…" he said, after dismissing the cadets who were staring at the ugly little girl.

Kagome dragged her wheeled suitcase after her, walking behind her parents who walked on either side of Cid. When they'd walked far enough into the garden that they reached the staircase, Kagome began struggling to pull her suitcase up the tall steps. Confused as to why Kagome's parents weren't helping, Cid made to carry the suitcase for the little girl.

Tohiro stopped him with pursed lips and said lowly, "No. She wants this; she will do it herself."

Cid noticed how Ai watched her daughter with hawk-like vision struggle up step after step. She didn't bother to help either, but anyone could see the mother wanted to. However, Tohiro had been very firm. If he was to pay for Kagome's training, his daughter would do the work herself. Kagome would learn to be reliant on no one but herself, because Tohiro wouldn't stand for her getting herself or anyone else killed.

The adults stopped at the top of the stairs, waiting for the child to make it to the top. It took Kagome half an hour to manage it, but manage she did. Cid was so surprised that the out-of-breath child could smile so brightly at her parents. "I made it, papa!" she said happily.

Tohiro looked at Cid, not acknowledging his daughter's achievement to which the pudgy little child pouted and Ai pursed her lips. "Let us continue swiftly. Our return train leaves in four hours."

Ai congratulated her child warmly. "Well done, sweetie. You did wonderful," she said. Kagome beamed at her mother and then rushed ahead of her mother to catch up with Cid and her father who were already at the gates ahead.

They caught up in time to hear Cid saying to Tohiro, "These are our security gates." He showed them a small ID badge and slid the barcode through a reader slot. "Senior Cadets—youths fifteen and older—are awarded a new ID badge with a gate key such as this," he walked them through the gate as it was open. "Junior Cadets are prohibited from leaving Garden unattended, and are not allowed a gate key. There is always a gate attendant," he added pointing to a man in a small room beside the gates. "Anyone without a gate key is prohibited from being in Garden unattended as well, as a safety precaution, of course."

Tohiro nodded.

They continued forward and Kagome had to struggle as there were more steps after the gates. She was glad the stairs weren't as big as the last set. Soon Cid was showing Kagome's parents all the things Balamb Garden had to offer.

"The Infirmary," he said as they entered, walking down a corridor where they could see out into a courtyard filled with students practicing hand-to-hand combat, "is next to our hand-to-hand specialist and small-weapons specialist courtyards. We have several SeeD instructors who will teach students to wield their weapons safely and expertly, and all the specialist training courtyards are on the first floor."

They entered the infirmary and Cid walked over to a plump woman with graying hair. "Doctor Kadowaki is our residing physician. Hello, Doctor, this is Mr. and Mrs. Higurashi, and their daughter Kagome." He said, introducing them.

Ai pursed her lips, demanding, "What qualifications do you have to be called 'Doctor'?" of the older woman. Being a doctor herself, and worrying about her daughter's safety, Ai was less-than-polite. Taken back slightly by the demand, Cid and the physician stared at Ai before Dr. Kadowaki began to slowly list off her credentials.

Bored already by the lack of excitement, Kagome sat down on the floor, yawning. Eventually Ai was satisfied with Dr. Kadowaki, and they again continued their tour, viewing the Quad—home to the Garden Festival—though for the sake of Kagome, Cid made an excuse so they didn't have to go down the stairs. The Cafeteria, Cid explained, had a variety of foods though the hot dogs were the most popular lunch food.

To get to the Dormitories, Cid walked them down a corridor that looked out on an outdoor courtyard Cid explained was the student's outdoor relaxation area. "There is an indoor student commons, though few students will use it," he explained. He showed them to the room Kagome would sleep in, a long room with ten beds in it. "Junior Cadets age ten and under will share a co-ed dorm room. Junior Cadets age eleven to fourteen share a same-sex room with three other Junior Cadets. Senior Cadets share a same-sex room with one other Senior Cadet. SeeDs share a co-ed double-dorm, consisting of two single rooms and a shared living space. We provide each child with a standing dresser, an equipment trunk, a bedside lamp, and a bed. Tuition covers the cost of uniforms which are to be worn during class hours. Equipment costs are unfortunately not covered by tuition."

The young mother pursed her lips and sniffed in disdain at the arrangements of the room. "My daughter will require a room of her own."

Tohiro counteracted, "These arrangements are acceptable."

Cid guessed Tohiro was as uncomfortable by the set up as all parents were, but was going along with it simply because his wife _wasn't_. Ai glared at her husband and said, "No daughter of mine will share a room with a boy!"

"Enough!" Tohiro snapped. "It is my money!" He turned to Cid and said, "Kagome has an expense fund set up for her; if she requires something, I expect you to provide it for her using that money." At Cid's confused expression, Tohiro explained, "Ai and I are very busy people and do not have time to worry about Kagome's schooling expenses. For the objective of expedience, you will take care of her needs."

"Oh… as you wish…" Cid said.

Tohiro looked at his watch impatiently and then said, "We have spent too much time here. We must leave now."

Ai pursed her lips. "I have not seen the entire school yet!"

Tohiro snapped at his wife, "This is the last SeeD Academy left; we both know you wouldn't say no and it wouldn't matter if you did." He turned to look down at his daughter who was staring at her mother and father apprehensively. "You do as the headmaster tells you. Understood?"

Kagome beamed at him widely. "Okay, papa!" she said.

Cid said, "I will give you a few moments of privacy to say your goodbyes, then. Kagome's bed will be the one on the end on the right side."

After he had gone, Ai led her daughter to her bed, sighing as Kagome went about unpacking quite independent of her parents aid. Kagome could read her name on a plaque tacked to her standing dresser, to the headboard on her bed, and to her trunk.

Ai tried to help her daughter unpack her few things, but Kagome refused her mother's help as usual. She could only watch with a sad look on her face as Kagome folded her clothes into the dresser and placed her two favorite books under her pillow. She blamed her husband for making Kagome the way she was and took none of the blame onto herself.

No goodbyes had been said. The young girl purposefully kept herself occupied, knowing her parents had to leave soon. It was sad, but Kagome _wanted_ her parents to go away. She always felt better when she was away from them and their arguments. Cid returned with a pretty young blonde in the SeeD formal uniform: Black blazer fixed with silver buttons, and a black skirt. She wore heels, rather than practical combative footwear, probably because she was in formal uniform. Her hands were covered in black gloves.

She stood at attention as she was introduced, sword dangling at her side in a sheath.

Cid said, "Mr. and Mrs. Higurashi, this is Ashe. She is the SeeD currently assigned to this dorm. Every month, the SeeDs assigned to Garden will rotate watching over Junior Cadet dorms or assisting with training in their specialty fields. She will be taking Kagome to get her uniforms, and will lead Kagome to and from classes."

Tohiro said, "That is fine." He looked directly at Ashe. "You are not to help her. She is to do everything on her own. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Sir." Ashe said formally.

Tohiro said, "Ai, we leave now." He left swiftly then, leaving Ai to follow with pursed lips. Cid spoke quietly to Ashe before leaving after the couple.

When her parents were gone, Kagome skipped over to Ashe with a big smile on her face. "Can I see your sword?" she begged.

Ashe said, "Maybe later. We need to go get your uniforms now."

After getting several uniforms for Kagome from a storage room, Ashe showed Kagome where her classroom would be on the second floor. They then returned to Kagome's shared dorm and Ashe showed Kagome how to fold her uniform so it wouldn't be wrinkled. Kagome declared she already _knew_ how to fold and dress in a uniform, but Ashe still went over it with her.

When she finished showing Kagome, Ashe had Kagome go with her to pick up her roommates from their last class of the day. Even though the regular school year had not started yet, Kagome learned that there were a few students who stayed at the school over the summer and had extra training during that time.

Kagome bounced along next to Ashe in her navy blue shorts-and-polo uniform as they proceeded to the second floor again. They waited in the hall for the class-end bell to ring and then the few that Ashe was waiting for came filing out. They lined up and Ashe introduced Kagome to the others.

"Okay, guys, this is Kagome Higurashi. Kagome, these are your roommates, Seifer Almasy, Quistis Trepe, and Squall Leonhart." Ashe said.

Seifer, the short-haired blonde boy, smirked with green eyes promising trouble. "_Ugly_." He sneered, unaware that the word was a trigger for Kagome.

Kagome's dark blue eyes lit up in rage and she immediately rushed at Seifer, knocking him down and starting to hit him repeatedly as the other two children watched in surprise. It took Ashe a moment to register the change as well, and by the time she was trying to pull Kagome off Seifer, Kagome had given Seifer a bloody nose.

"I—am—not—_ugly_!" Kagome shrieked.

The raucous Kagome had caused even after barely being at the school for five hours brought the teacher out of the classroom as Seifer whined over a bloody nose. That night, Kagome learned how to mop floors in the cafeteria as punishment for injuring her roommate. She wasn't the only one mopping, though. Her brown-haired roommate Squall was as well.

Watching over the two detention-students was a lazy SeeD whose only job was to make sure they didn't try to skip out. It didn't seem that the SeeD was doing his job to his best potential as he was sleeping in his chair after ten minutes.

Kagome walked over to Squall, dragging her mop behind her. Squall watched her warily, as he probably should. "Hi," she said to him.

"…" was the only response she was awarded. The boy figured if he didn't say anything offensive, she wouldn't get aggressive.

Kagome beamed at him. "I'm Kagome!" she said.

"…" He stared at her and then returned to pushing the mop around on the floor.

"Don't you know how to talk?" Kagome asked him.

He said nothing.

Kagome looked around her with a pout on her face. "I'm tired of pushing water. I want to fight fiends!" It took her only a few seconds to knock over her sudsy water pail.

Squall stared at her in disbelief. "What are you doing?" he demanded, glancing at their detention supervisor apprehensively. If he woke up, they'd be in trouble!

"Well, all we have to do is get the floor wet!" Kagome said. "This is just faster." She giggled, knowing that Hiten would have done the same thing.

Squall shook his head, "I really don't…" he started, but then she'd splashed her way over and dumped his bucket, getting his socks and shoes soaked in the process. Then, Kagome grabbed his hand and pulled on it. In surprise, he dropped his mop and was dragged after the pudgy girl. "What are you doing?" he asked again.

"We're going fiend hunting!" she said importantly. An hour later, they had been found in the Quad by their detention supervisor (who was rather unhappy with them both) and were given another night of detention as punishment for tipping their mop buckets and chasing off unsupervised. Squall decided he didn't like Kagome very much for getting him in trouble.

They were sent to bed and Kagome found Seifer—the whiny baby—was sleeping in the bed directly across from hers. Quistis was sleeping in the bed nearest the door. Squall's bed was the one directly left of Kagome's. Kagome read her Ugly Duckling book as she fell asleep, feeling a bit lonely that night without Hiten there. Sure, he hadn't been there for a while but she still missed him a lot.

As Kagome had always been, she was up before the crack of dawn. She sat in bed and read about Kikyou in the morning before she crawled out of bed and got dressed in her blue uniform. Once she was dressed, Kagome walked over to Squall's bed and climbed up on it next to the sleeping boy. She wasn't sure why, but she wanted to be friends with him. She needed only to look at him once and her decision to be his friend had been made.

"WAKE UP!" she screamed in his ear, causing him to be startled right off the edge of the bed.

Quistis and Seifer both lifted their heads and glared at Kagome. Kagome ignored them and crawled to the edge of the bed, peering down at Squall. He looked up at her with a terrified expression on his face.

"Good morning!" she chirped to him as he rubbed his forehead.

Seifer whipped a pillow in Kagome's direction. "SHUT IT, UGLY!" he yelled.

Squall was able to watch as a berserker rage was yet again lit in Kagome's eyes and she was soon chasing after Seifer. Remembering his nose bleed the day before, Seifer's eyes widened and he ran away from the young, raging girl.

Kagome chased Seifer out into the hall, him still in his pajamas, and her with her fists raised and screaming, "I am** not **ugly!" Two Senior Cadets stopped them in the dormitory corridors and they were taken (Kagome struggling to get at Seifer the entire time) to Ashe.

"What's going on here?" Ashe asked as she threw a robe on over her nightshirt, frown on her face.

Pulling the sympathy card, Seifer whined, "She just attacked me, Ashe! Just like that!"

"Knowing you, you probably deserved it, you scamp," Ashe said, scowling. The next problem was trying to calm Kagome down. It was harder than it was the day before. Once she was calmed down, she was taken to see the headmaster. She decided she didn't like the headmaster; he told her Seifer didn't deserve to be punched, but she knew better. Anyone who called her ugly _would_ be hit.

That night, she had detention with Squall again, and once more their napping supervisor did his job spectacularly. They were again mopping the cafeteria. Instead of tipping the bucket over, Kagome asked Squall, "Why do you have to push water?"

Warily he looked at her before saying, "I punched Seifer."

Kagome smiled brightly. "I knew there was a reason to like you!" she told him.

Squall blushed and smiled ruefully, gripping his mop tight. After a moment, both children were laughing, though neither knew exactly why.

From that day forward, the weird pair were often seen together, quiet Squall and excessively loud Kagome. Kagome ignored her teacher's seating charts and sat by Squall in the back of the room, just as he ignored the seating chart and refused to sit anywhere but in the back row. Students started arriving at school, returning from summer vacation, and the empty six beds in Kagome's dorm filled up.

Seifer had found Kagome's Ugly Duckling book under her pillow and after that (without knowing what the story was about) constantly called her the Ugly Duck. He thought it was funny to make quacking noises around her, and soon that started getting him hit by Kagome, because she knew he didn't mean well like Hiten did when he called her his little Ugly Duckling…

Kagome's classroom instructors chose to not argue over Kagome sitting in the back when they realized that her grades wouldn't suffer. She was top of her class, not that her father would accept anything less of course. They praised her to the headmaster constantly for her intelligence, and recommended she be bumped up to a higher grade. Her GF Theory teacher already assigned Quezecotl to the child and had her practicing summoning by the time December rolled around.

Without Kagome realizing it, Hiten slowly faded from her mind.

However, her physical classes held her back. They couldn't get any practice weapons in her hand without her going ballistic, and her hand-to-hand combat skills were incredibly lacking—still.

In February, headmaster Cid was forced to concede defeat. None of his instructors were able to teach Kagome, and she had a half-dozen additional SeeDs instructing her personally.

Tohiro and Ai were called. When they arrived for Kagome and she saw them, she started to cry. They only ever came to school when she had to leave it. She didn't want to go, so she decided she wouldn't. She left Squall at their lunch table, running around her parents, too fast for them to catch her, and went to find a hiding spot.

It was several hours before a frantically searching SeeD found her in the Quad, hiding beneath the stage. Strangely enough, Kagome was surrounded by a glowing green _Protect_ barrier spell, one that was incredibly powerful; enough that the SeeD couldn't get within ten feet of the child. The SeeD went and reported to the headmaster of his findings; soon, the headmaster and Kagome's parents were by the stage, trying to coax her out because they could not go in and get her.

"Kagome, sweetie, we'll find another school. I promise," her mother said.

The child knew that was a lie, though. "No, I want to stay _here_. I don't want another school! I'll be good! I won't punch Seifer anymore. He can call me ugly! But I don't want to go away!"

Later that night, as the adults were conferring on how they might get the barrier down and who might've put it up (and why), Squall came looking for Kagome. Thinking the adults to be too busy talking to notice him, he snuck over to the stage and looked inside at his friend. "Kagome, let me in," he said.

To the adult's surprise, the barrier popped like a bubble, and when they peered under the stage they could see Squall holding a sobbing Kagome. "I don't wanna go! I always have to go. Mama and papa always take me away from school!" Kagome cried, and as she cried, they witnessed a new barrier growing out from Kagome, with Kagome as the origin, until it was just as big as the last one.

This gave Cid an idea, and he told Kagome's parents to wait in the Quad. When he came back, Ashe—who was once more the supervisor of their dorm, being one of the few who seemed to be able to calm Kagome she'd been assigned to the dorm 'until further notice'—was with him. He had Ashe cast _Dispel_ repeatedly until the barrier broke. It took three of the spells to break it. Squall brought the sniffling Kagome out from under the stage and glared daggers at her parents.

"She doesn't have to go. You can't make her," he said with certainty.

Ai said, "I don't want her to. Your headmaster is the one who made the decision." Ai, in turn, glared heatedly at the headmaster.

Cid sighed heavily. "I'm sorry, Squall, but Kagome can't keep up in physical training."

"No, but she's good at magic!" Squall insisted. Squall looked at her parent's surprised expressions and tried to make them understand as much as he did. "She doesn't like magic, but all the instructors say it. She's the best there is! Our magic theory instructor said Kagome cast a _Berserk_ spell in class once without even being told how! And we're not even s'posed to be able to do magic for a couple years!"

Truth was, Squall didn't want his friend to go away. It was hard to dislike Kagome when she hated Seifer just as much as Squall did. Cid paused slightly at Squall's words. "A _Berserk_ spell, you say?" Squall nodded. Cid looked at Ashe. "Would you escort these two back to their room, please, Ashe?" She nodded and saluted, and Squall glared at the headmaster as he passed with Kagome hugging him tight around the chest.

Kagome's mother and father came to see Kagome later that night; she was sleeping on Squall's bed next to him, sniffling. The sight made Kagome's father and mother both irritated. Kagome's father picked up his daughter and put her in her own bed. Despite being a naturally light sleeper, Kagome didn't wake. Squall insisted, "You can't take her away." His voice, though a mere whisper, seemed loud in the dark, quiet room filled with sleeping children.

Ai said, "Hush, child. Your headmaster thinks he has an alternative solution. She may get to stay after all." She tucked her child in and they left after that. A month later, Kagome's mother returned alone and instead of taking her mother to her, Kagome was taken to the headmaster's office so she couldn't run off.

Kagome's eyes welled with tears, but her mother hurriedly explained, "I'm not here to take you home, sweetie! Just to give you a present. I want you to wear it all the time, and don't take it off, okay? Not even in the bath. Promise me, Kagome…"

Blinking away the tears, and feeling happy that she wasn't being forced to leave school, Kagome nodded as her mother took a pendant from her pocket. It was a yellow tourmaline gem, shaped like a lightning bolt, hanging from a length of silver chain link. It looked like it would be just a length of chain, but the toggle clasp fit through any of the links, toggling in the front and leaving the gem to hang down. It was long and the gem hung down to Kagome's sternum, but Kagome would probably grow into it, Ai figured.

"It's pretty, mama," she giggled, unable to remember where she'd seen a yellow rock the same as she was wearing now. It looked familiar to her, though.

"Don't take it off, okay?" Again Kagome agreed not to and her mother returned to Esthar that night. That night, when Seifer followed his usual routine and called her an ugly duck, Kagome punched him…and then for the first time, she let Squall pull her back without struggling to get at the bloody-nosed blond.

During lessons with the sword the next day, Kagome's instructor apprehensively gave her a wooden practice sword. SeeD Vaan half-expected Kagome to do what she usually did and go nuts the minute her sword hit his (she couldn't be paired off with students, since she always went ballistic and injured them so she had to have her own instructor for each physical training class). She didn't, though, and that surprised him. She was as harmless as a newborn babe with the sword, and he was able to take her through the motions and watch as she struggled to comprehend them.

As the year wore on, Kagome and Squall, both being nearly eight, were supposed to pick a combative area to specialize in. Kagome only had less than half a year to train properly in any of the areas, but at the beginning of June when the decision came around Kagome wanted to pick swords automatically. It was all she ever wanted to pick.

Squall chose to specialize in Gunblades, mostly because Seifer had chosen that the year before and Squall wanted to prove he was better than his rival. Squall wasn't thinking about how much a Gunblade would cost him one day, and he wasn't worried about how he would pay for it to begin with either. Instead, the quiet boy merely told their instructor what he wanted to do and ignored the instructor's suggestion for the orphan to specialize in hand-to-hand combat.

Their chosen specialties were referred to the headmaster for approval; Squall's was accepted, and Kagome was called into the headmaster's large office again. The headmaster sat her down and told her he was going to deny her request because he felt she would be better suited in a different class.

"No!" Kagome yelled instantly. "I want to use a sword and fight all the fiends!" Light from the giant windows of the office reflected off the pretty gem Kagome wore around her neck. She slid off her seat and glared angrily at Cid. "You just don't want me to be a warrior! You want to stop me! But you can't!"

Cid waited for the child to stop ranting, speaking when she stopped for breath. "Kagome, you have a gift very few have." Cid told her, the compliment forcing her to snap her mouth shut rather than ranting again. He didn't dumb his speaking down, because the child before him was very intelligent and would feel offended if he had. "You have a propensity for magic, and I want to help you reach your full potential with it."

"I hate magic!" Kagome insisted. "I don't want to use magic. I don't care if I'm good at it. I didn't want to be."

"But you _are_. You're good at magic, and you're even better at using a Guardian Force." He reached out and pulled back her sleeve, revealing the leather bracer on her right wrist, in which a small, flat, circular stone was embedded with the word "Quezecotl" in fine engraving print. "Your GF Theory instructor has asked to take you to the training center to test your control with Quezecotl."

"Who cares?" she demanded, pulling her hand back and hiding the bracer under her sleeve. "I still hate magic. I just did what Instructor Eiko told me to do, 'cause papa said to listen to my instructors." Instructor Eiko was probably the weirdest of all of Kagome's teachers. She was childlike, but despite her appearances she was in her mid-twenties. She had a unicorn horn on her head and her SeeD uniform had a hole in the back of the shirt and blazer to allow for two small, white feathered wings which she claimed was from a "magic experiment gone wrong". Their magic instructor Lulu had used Instructor Eiko as an example of why they shouldn't use magic unless they knew how to do so properly and safely.

Cid sighed and decided to try a new tactic, hoping it would wield better results and not backfire on either of them later on. "You _need_ proper instruction at magic, Kagome, or you could seriously hurt someone…" Kagome gave him a confused look and he knelt in front of her (in spite of his aching, aged knees) to lift her necklace pendant to the level of her vision. "This is a special necklace, Kagome. I'm going to tell you now why you must wear it, but you must promise not to tell anyone." He received a hesitant nod from the girl. "Not even Squall."

"Okay…" she agreed, and he only hoped the young girl would keep her promise. It would be dangerous for her if the wrong person knew.

"Do you remember all the times that Seifer made you very upset?"

She scowled and nodded. "I think he does it on purpose, but I'm still gonna punch him. I don't care if you don't like it," she said boldly. "He deserves it!"

"Do you remember when you couldn't stop hitting him?" Cid asked then.

Kagome thought about that, recalling how she used to get so mad all she could think about was hurting Seifer, so she nodded. "I wanted to hit him, though, and he still deserved it."

"But now when you hit him, you can stop, can't you?" Kagome nodded again. "Before, you weren't able to stop because you were casting _Berserk_ on yourself. Your magic instructors and I are confident that you're capable of converting your emotions into magic. When you were angry, you would cast _Berserk_ on yourself without even realizing it."

The intelligent little girl's face lit up in realization, as she exclaimed, "But I don't do that anymore! Not since mama gave me this," she indicated the necklace.

"That's right," Cid agreed. "The chain on the pendant nullifies the spell _Berserk_, and the pendant absorbs lightning based magic." Kagome didn't have any difficulty understanding what Cid meant, despite being young. Cid meant that when Kagome subconsciously cast _Berserk_ on herself, it wouldn't have any affect, and if anyone or any fiends used lightning based magic, it would be converted into life magic, such as Cure, and have a positive affect on her rather than a harmful one.

So, Kagome could easily come to the conclusion that, "I get to be a sword fighter, because I don't get mad anymore!"

Cid sighed yet again. It took him hours to explain to Kagome why she wasn't being allowed to specialize in swordsmanship, and even when Ashe took her back to her dorm room, Kagome was furious at him, declaring her hatred of him at the top of her lungs. The following week, Kagome and Squall had separate physical training classes, him going to learn to use a gunblade with his (as Squall secretly told Kagome) evil-Instructor-Whose-Mother-Was-A-Fiend SeeD Auron, and her… stuck learning to whack things with a weak rod. She was the _only_ one in the class, which made her feel worse. Squall tried to make her feel better about it by saying he and Seifer were the only gunblade specialists, but it made her feel worse.

On her last day of class, SeeD Instructor Yuna—her specialist instructor—brought snacks in and said they wouldn't use the class time to train, since it was the last class before the summer. They sat next to each other on the floor of the tiny, upstairs classroom they got to use. Kagome didn't even get to use one of the practice courtyards to train. Squall and Seifer got to train in a special courtyard designed especially for the use of gunblade training.

Kagome didn't eat the snacks Yuna offered her. She merely hugged her knees and stared at nothing for a few minutes before growing bored of the lack of activity and getting up to attack the padded dummy without skill or coordination, but trying to do just what she learned in hand-to-hand combat during the time she was allowed in it.

As Yuna watched the sullen girl struggle, she asked, "So, Kagome, how do you like this class?"

"It sucks." Kagome said, scowling but not bothering to look at Yuna. "I'd tell my papa how much it sucks, if I weren't scared he'd take me out of school again."

Yuna was surprised by the answer. "You don't like it? But didn't you pick it?"

"No!" Kagome snapped, turning her mean stare on Yuna and clenching her fists. "I wanted to fight with _swords_. It's all I ever wanted to fight with! But stupid headmaster Cid said no! He made me be here."

"Oh…" Yuna began, and then scratched her chin. "Well, I can't exactly argue with the headmaster's decision… but you do have options…"

Kagome looked at Yuna suspiciously. "What'd'ya mean?"

Yuna quickly packed up her bag of snacks and set it by the door, grabbing her long staff which was resting near the door as well. She winked at Kagome. "Come on, I'll show you." Kagome followed Yuna curiously and the woman took her to a store room filled with practice weapons of all kinds. Kagome wanted to take one of the practice swords, but Yuna grabbed her hand and shook her head. "Not _that_ kind of option… But, I hope just as good."

"Nothing's as good as a sword," Kagome insisted. Yuna led Kagome to the back of the store room and showed her a rack of staves and rods. All of them were ordinary wood, the only difference was that some were longer than others.

"These are the tools of our trade, Kagome… Staves and rods, that's pretty much all we have to work with. So instead of me picking a rod for you, why don't you pick what you want?"

Kagome chose a staff instead of a rod like she had before. She still didn't think it was as good as a sword, but it was better than the puny wood rod. They returned to the room then and Yuna spent the rest of the afternoon—even after the end-of-day bell rung—using magic to saw the staff to a proper length for the young girl and then showing her the basics of staff work.

When the dinner bell rang, Kagome was surprised at how late it had already gotten. She gave Yuna her staff—Junior Cadets weren't allowed to carry their weapons around until age twelve—and said, "I guess it's okay, but I still want to learn the sword."

Yuna smiled at Kagome and asked, "You're from Esthar, aren't you?" Kagome nodded. "Well, if you go home for the summer, have your parents call this number," she quickly wrote a number down on a piece of paper, knowing the child would take care not to lose it, "and ask for Rikku and Yuffie. Tell them to say Yuna said to call, and they'll be able to teach you some small weapons work, and some hand-to-hand combat over the summer. I know it's not a sword, but…"

Kagome beamed up at Yuna. "Thanks!"

Yuna's smile widened and the little girl hastily exited the room, her book bag slung on her shoulder as she headed for dinner.

Kagome found Squall picking at his food at dinner. She didn't make it in time to get anything good; all that was left was the ever-dreaded, over cooked spaghetti that was always mass-produced once that evening's special ran out. She didn't bother going to get food from the line, instead sitting by Squall at the table and grasping his fork from his fingers.

Squall looked at her and blinked slowly as she speared his vegetables and started eating with the fork he'd already used to nibble at his desert. He always ate his desert first, and his main course last. Since he never ate his vegetables and Kagome would, he left those for her.

"You… are still here?" he asked her in surprise.

Kagome speared more vegetables. "Ya. Where should I be?" she asked him.

"I donno. I just thought… you'd be going home for the summer. Like everyone else." The cafeteria was a lot emptier than usual. Students who would be going home for the summer would usually leave within two days of the last class. Kagome expected to be going home the next day.

"Mama wrote and said Maria was going to pick me up after school got done." Kagome said. Squall watched as Kagome's eyes shadowed briefly. "Mama and papa are too busy to come, but they said I have to come home for the summer. I don't want to."

Squall took his fork back and cut up his slices of ham, determined to make Kagome smile. He speared a piece of the ham on the fork and then, with a grin on his face, he said, "Open up." Obediently she did, but he purposefully missed and rubbed the ham on her cheek and nose.

She giggled and pushed his hand away, grabbing a piece of cheesy broccoli and rubbing it on his face. He mock-glared at her, cheese dripping down his cheek, but found himself hard pressed to keep a straight face as a glob of cheese fell onto his lap and she broke into peals of laughter. "Ew, I just put the ham on you, not a whole cheese!" he complained, trying unsuccessfully to hide his grin.

Once she'd eaten whatever he wouldn't (and he cleaned his face and lap free of the gooey yellow substance), the two of them returned to their dorm room. No one had come back yet, so they were alone in the room. Squall sat cross-legged on Kagome's bed as she pulled her suitcase from beneath her bed and started to carefully pack her things together. He had a three-day break from classes, as his summer classes wouldn't start until students had left school, leaving only those taking summer classes behind.

"Why don't you want to go home?" Squall asked at last. "I thought you liked your parents…"

Kagome left her suitcase unzipped, as she wouldn't put her two favorite books in it until she had to leave, and crawled up on the bed by him. He wrinkled his nose in irritation as she put her head in his lap, but as usual he let it slide. He was surprised when she didn't answer. She didn't want him to know her parents were never happy with her.

"Do you think I'm ugly, Squall?" she asked him. It was the first time she'd asked him, always afraid he'd call her ugly like Seifer did. If he did that, she'd have to beat him up and he was her first friend—she didn't want to do that to him. Something inside her nagged at her, telling her he wasn't really her first friend, but no one else had ever been her friend before… Everyone always said she was ugly.

Squall looked down at her, meeting her dark blue eyes with his icy blue-grey ones. A small smile twitched his lips, but he didn't actually let himself smile. "I like your eyes," he said, running the pad of his right forefinger over her cheekbone. "But you have a temper." He added, mentally congratulating himself for diverting the question. His first thought when he saw her the day they met was that she was some sort of human puzzle… pieces taken randomly from different people to make up her appearance. However, he wasn't going to tell her that knowing it would just make her angry and he didn't want a bloody nose.

Kagome's eyes narrowed up at him and she growled, "I do _not_!"

Squall caught her hand as it raised to hit him, though he could tell she didn't actually mean to injure him. If she meant to do him harm, she would've regardless of what might happen to her. He yawned and asked, "Are you gonna be here when I wake up?"

Kagome shrugged. "Only if you want me to be," she said.

Squall nodded. He did indeed want his friend to be there.

So Kagome agreed, "I'll be here when you wake up, even if I have to wake you myself." Squall's icy glare was all-too-real, and all-too-ignored. He didn't like how she would wake him up.

The next morning, Ashe and Squall walked Kagome to the front gate, watching with humored expressions as Kagome shoved her suitcase down the stairs screaming, "Look out below!" to the cadets at the bottom. One boy narrowly avoided getting hit and glared up at her, but said nothing when he saw Ashe break out laughing. Squall didn't laugh, but his icy blue-grey eyes danced in amusement.

Kagome climbed up on the metal railing and held on, sliding down backward. When the railing leveled out for a few paces, she scooted back along the rod until she could slide again with a loud, "Wheee!" emitting from her lips joyfully.

Squall raced down the stairs, jumping down several at a time with ease and coordination that showed the three years he'd been at the academy. Kagome didn't have the same kind of grace as she fell from the end of the rail onto her back, but she didn't cry. Instead, she kept laughing and the shy, socially awkward boy approached her, slowing to a walk as Ashe descended the steps.

Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his uniform shorts (he didn't own ordinary clothes; the only clothes the boy had were standard academy issued ones), Squall prodded Kagome's side with the toe of his shoe, a hesitant and rueful smile on his face. Ashe knew Squall never smiled around anyone except the pudgy little girl, but she couldn't figure out what it was that drew the two children together.

As the SeeD watched Kagome giggle and shove at Squall's foot, she couldn't help but smile at the image they made. Perhaps it was because both of them were social outcasts that made them stick together? Squall was one seemingly by choice. He talked even less than necessary. It was always a treat for Ashe to drag a few sentences out of the boy, but it was simultaneously like pulling teeth.

Kagome, on the other hand, was outcast from social circles at first because of her appearances—even the Instructors had been heard talking quietly about how ugly Kagome really was—and then because of her wild and unpredictable temper. Seifer wasn't the only cadet to receive a bloody nose or black eye from the girl. Granted, Seifer was the only one who received it on a daily basis but…

"Alright, you two," Ashe said, picking the young children up off the ground and separating them. Kagome had knocked Squall to the ground and started to wrestle him, but he was stronger and definitely better at wrestling, so he'd pinned her easily. Between these two, it was all in fun Ashe knew. "Come on, we have to go to the gate now." She said.

Kagome giggled and brushed at Squall's shirt like her nanny used to do to her when she got dusty. Squall caught her hands and wrinkled his nose at her, obviously unable to stop the emotion from showing. "Don't be such a girl," he told her seriously.

Kagome let out a mock-shriek. "Oh no! I'm a _girl_!" she said and then broke out into another fit of giggles. "Cooties!" She said, and he instantly dropped her hands before stepping backwards with an eyebrow raised.

Ashe wondered about these two for a moment. Sometimes she felt they were both older than their age, but she supposed both had to grow quickly to suit their situations. Squall was an orphan left to a military school when his orphanage was attacked by overly aggressive fiends. Ashe had been there that day to remember it. Squall had seen many of his fellow orphans killed that day, saw them cut in half, saw them being eaten by fiends, saw them struck down by fiendish magic… and he'd heard his fellow orphan's screams as they died, unable to do anything to stop what had happened. It had been since that day that Squall stopped talking; he used to be very chatty and happy.

Kagome's circumstances were still mostly unknown to Ashe, but the SeeD thought anyone with a father like Kagome's would be forced to grow up before their time. Couple that with how obviously strained her parents' relationship was, and anyone could tell Kagome's home life wasn't an easy one. Kagome might be the daughter of a rich man, but it was because of that her parents could have such terribly high standards for the girl, and failure to meet those standards would probably bring terrible consequences.

Then again… Ashe watched as Kagome chased Squall around a tree near a pink draw point screaming "cooties" over and over again… They were just kids after all… And at least Kagome had the ability to draw Squall back out of his shell.

"Guys… guys…" Ashe said, trying to get the kids' attention. Even military cadets wanted to play sometimes. With a burst of speed that belied Kagome's pudgy form, Kagome spun on her heel and ran the other way, tackling Squall into the grass before he could realize what had happened.

"I win! I win!" she cheered, but he shoved her off and rolled to his feet. It took another half an hour for Ashe to get the children to the front gate where, by that time, a car was already waiting to pick Kagome up and take her to the train station in Balamb. An older woman who Ashe knew to be Maria the nanny stood by the car with a warm, welcoming smile on her face. Maria's photo had been sent ahead, so that a random person couldn't show up and claim to be Kagome's nanny and sneak off with her.

The moment Kagome saw her nanny, she raced over to the old woman and hugged her. The woman smiled warmly and asked Kagome, "Have you said all your goodbyes? It will be a while before you return here…"

Kagome turned her head and glanced back at where Squall was standing expressionlessly beside Ashe. The little boy's eyes betrayed his feelings clearly; he didn't want his friend to leave him, but he wouldn't say anything.

Kagome walked back to Squall and stood before him, scuffing her shoe on the ground with a guilty expression on her face. "Um…" she began, unsure how to say goodbye. She'd never had to do it before. "I'm sorry I have to go…" she continued.

Squall's eyes narrowed at her. "I'm not." He said firmly. Kagome instantly bristled at his tone and the finality of his voice. However, before she could get too mad at him, he continued, "I'm _not_ going to say goodbye. You're coming back the first week of August. Saying goodbye is pointless."

Kagome blinked at his logic and then her slight anger turned into a bright smile. "You're right!" she said.

"I usually am," he pointed out tonelessly, eliciting a giggle from her.

"I'll be back soon then!" she chirped and dragged her suitcase over to the waiting vehicle. The driver loaded it into the car and Kagome went to get in. Suddenly not wanting to watch her go, Squall turned around with the intention of going back into the school. He was barreled over from behind as the young girl crashed into him, hugging him. She was laughing, and he glared at her, barely catching himself from a painful landing.

As Kagome's sleeve slid up, Ashe noticed Kagome was still wearing her leather bracer, with Quezecotl's stone still very firmly lodged in it. Ashe frowned, but said nothing. If SeeD Instructor Eiko hadn't asked for it back, perhaps there was a reason for it… Then again, no other child Kagome's age had a summoning stone… But surely the strange, blue-haired woman wouldn't have forgotten… Not something so important, which Kagome would surely have used in class for practicing the day before…

Less than five minutes later, Kagome was in the car though she hadn't buckled up, instead favoring the idea of watching out the back window and waving to her friend. As the car pulled away, Squall stared irritably after her, massaging his hand after the impact with the ground.

The return trip to Esthar City took five days, with almost four of them spent on a boat. While they traveled, Kagome showed Maria all the things she'd been learning at school, including giving Maria a demonstration on how she could summon the Guardian Force Quezecotl. It was likely that Kagome wasn't supposed to have Quezecotl over the summer, but her instructor hadn't asked Kagome to un-junction him, and Kagome was happy to keep the lightning-bird GF.

Kagome failed to notice how summoning her GF struck terror into the sailors, as Quezecotl appeared in a bolt of lightning struck down from an unnatural storm cloud. Maria was also frightened, but not of the fiend-like creature. She feared for Kagome, because the sailors seemed to understand that Kagome was the source of the bird up in the sky.

"Now, now, child, you shouldn't show off your powers like that. No one likes a braggart," Maria chastised the girl, internally proud but not wanting anything to happen to Kagome.

"Oh, okay," Kagome said, pouting a little as she turned to wave to the bird flying lazily next to their slowly moving ship. "You can go back, Quezy!" Kagome said. "We can play back at my house!" The bird arched upward, flying straight up toward that unnatural storm cloud and becoming a bolt of lightning in the center. The skies cleared, becoming beautiful blue calm once again.

Maria then took Kagome down into their cabin and it was there that they remained. In the cabin, Kagome described everything that happened to her over the year in great length, her voice and actions emphasizing her likes and dislikes of certain aspects of the school year.

When she told Maria about headmaster Cid's decision not to let her learn the sword, Maria calmly inquired, "Why would the headmaster deny your request?"

"'Cause he wants me to learn magic." Kagome pouted. "He said magic will work best for me if I learn the staff, but I hate it. He said staves, rods, and wands channel magical energy more than swords. I wanted to learn the sword."

Maria took Kagome off the subject before Kagome could become sad over it, asking, "Did you make any friends?" That question launched Kagome into a new rant and she told Maria all about Squall, Seifer, and all the other cadets.

"Squall thinks I'm pretty," Kagome said, beaming at Maria. "He said so yesterday. I asked him myself!"

Maria chuckled warmly at that. "Well, it's good to know you have more friends than just Hiten around," the nanny said good-naturedly, referring to the imaginary friend Kagome once had, but had forgotten completely.

Looking at Maria in confusion, Kagome asked, "Who is Hiten?" Maria tried to explain the imaginary friend to Kagome, but had no success doing so and Kagome simply called Maria weird for insisting on such a silly thing. Kagome, on the other hand, insisted Squall was her first friend.

Their arrival at the Higurashi manor ended up around six PM. Kagome dragged her suitcase into the house and was instantly swamped with a flurry of servants who took her things from her to take to her room. Kagome herself went roaming the house, not truly expecting her mother or father to be home but still hopeful.

It was due to this that she was surprised to find her mother and father were both home, and both of them were content with each other, talking amiably about their day. Surprised to hear them _not_ arguing, Kagome decided she shouldn't disturb them. She came to the conclusion that when she was away from home, not only was she more happy, but her parents seemed to be as well.

Her decision to not disturb them, however, came too late. Maria had come upon her standing in the hall outside her mother's private sitting room—more a social tea room than anything—and ushered her inside. Her father looked up at Kagome from some documents he was reading, pushing his glasses up his long nose as he did so to look at the girl with stern eyes.

"Ah, Maria, thank you," he said slowly, as though uncertain whether the servant could understand him if he spoke normally. Even Kagome knew her father had dismissed Maria from his presence. Nervous, Kagome reverted into the behavior that was drilled into her over the year at the military academy and stood at attention, arms tight to her sides, hands flat against her thighs, feet together, and back straight, with her chin up and her head faced forward.

Kagome wasn't sure why she felt the need to act this way around her father, but something about him was different than the last time she saw him. Her mother's back was still to Kagome; the woman was sitting on a couch and hadn't turned to greet her daughter, which made Kagome feel a bit hurt.

After a moment, Maria was gone and Kagome was left alone with her parents.

Tohiro said importantly, "I am currently going over reports of your schooling in the academy," and his lips pursed at that point. "I must say, I am severely disappointed by my findings."

Kagome panicked internally, but forced herself to stay at attention. She told herself to keep thinking about Squall, because at least he liked her. He was her friend; her parents, on the other hand, were never happy about anything she did, even if it was right.

"Apart from your physical assessments—which are atrocious to say the least—it says here you ranked third out of your mathematics course." Tohiro continued. His tone of voice and the frown on his face indicated more than his words that he was displeased rather than proud.

Unable to even continue standing at attention, Kagome burst out in her defense. "Third out of twenty-five other cadets! That's really good!" Math wasn't her best classroom subject; it was her worst, actually.

Tohiro sent a scathing glare at her and his voice rose, "You will remain silent when I am addressing you!" Taken back by the sudden shout, Kagome fell silent as instructed and resumed standing at attention, suddenly feeling like an animal in a cage. Trapped.

Her mother still hadn't even looked at her. Why was her mother ignoring her? Why wasn't her mother arguing with her father? Why had things changed? Her father had never raised his voice at her before.

Tohiro said, "What is more disgraceful than your failure in simple mathematics is that you were surpassed by two wretched _orphans_! So, Kagome, why don't you _tell_ me what was so _important_ that it interfered with your work?"

"Nothing!" Kagome tried to say. "I always do my homework fir—"

"Do you? Do you really?" Tohiro demanded, rising from his seat to stalk over to her. He tossed the papers at her and she tried to catch them but failed miserably; instead the papers fluttered around her and made a mess at her feet. "There should be nothing else _but_ your work! Instead of fluttering around with that unpleasant spawn of a Harpy, you could have been double checking your school work, or practicing for your physical assessments!"

Tears filled up Kagome's eyes as her father continued to yell at her and she wished he would stop. This certainly was not the father she thought she knew, but then again she rarely ever had the chance to see him to begin with. Apart from listening to arguments between her mother and father, and the two second hug she used to get if she was in the entrance hall as he left for work, she _didn't_ know him much. The longest he'd ever spent with her had been the day they went to the museum and the fair together when she was four.

But she knew all the things he was yelling at her for. As far as her physical evaluations went in her combat training, she was at the very bottom for ranking, although her instructors had said she was improving slightly since she'd received the pendant from her mother. She still ranked last though…

Her father never praised her for her rank in other classes such as GF Theory which she was at the very top in, but rather chose to criticize her for failing to succeed and letting Seifer Almasy and Quistis Trepe beat her math scores. He was most livid about the math scores.

In his tirade, Tohiro had a great many snide comments directed at Squall which served to make Kagome angry. Finally Tohiro stopped speaking and glared down at his daughter for a long moment. When he spoke again, his words burst the dam holding in Kagome's tears. Warriors don't cry, her father had once said.

"You can forget going back to that school." Tohiro stated flatly. "If you still want to be a fighter for hire when you are out of my house that is your decision to make. As far as I'm concerned, you will remain at home under the tutelage of proper instructors, and there will be no 'training'. I will not pay such high costs for you to simply waste your time fraternizing with a whelp!"

Kagome looked imploringly at the back of her mother's head and whimpered, "Mama, please…"

Her mother got to her feet as well, turning to face Kagome. Kagome froze, stunned by what she was seeing and unable to believe it. She was a smart girl, and knew what it obviously meant, but her heart broke when she saw what her mother cradled in her arms. A small child, sleeping despite the shouting, wrapped in a blue blanket.

"Don't 'Mama' me, Kagome. You heard your father," Kagome couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her mother—_her mother­_—had just agreed with her father.

Anger built in Kagome more and more, and she could feel the chain of the pendant weighing on her neck, heavy and hot as if collecting magic she wasn't supposed to be casting. It probably was, if it did indeed nullify _Berserk_ magic; this was the sort of rage she always felt when someone called her ugly.

How could her mother agree with her father? Were they tired of her? Was she really ugly? Or had she just failed at one too many schools? She could remember over half a dozen schools that she'd been at, where people would just call her ugly. Trabia Garden, she recalled specifically for Ayumi, Eri, and Yuka, the three girls who she shared a dorm with and who had called her an assortment of names other than just 'ugly'.

Her eyes fell on the creature in her mother's arms, held so protectively by the woman, and her anger grew even more until the starburst patterned scar on her stomach from a Death Claw's attack started to itch, and the sky outside the windows grew suddenly dark, as if night had fallen in just a few minutes. "Why do you hate me?" Kagome practically begged the question, but her voice was drowned out as thunder rattled the window panes.

When she received no answer other than pursed lips of her father and her mother staring in confusion out the window, Kagome screamed at her father, "You hate me! You never liked me! But you'll let _that thing_," she pointed an accusatory finger at the child—more a fiend to her than anything at the moment of her rage—and her father's eyes flashed angrily, "be with you more than me!"

She wasn't stupid. She could piece two-and-two together; the child had brought her parents arguments to a stand still, or at least it was a major contributor that factored into the final result. Her anger still hadn't peaked, yet outside thunder was flashing and lightning was cracking; rain began to pelt against the house, as though the weather itself was echoing her feelings.

"You hate me and you always have! But you love _that thing_ don't you?"

Angered by the insinuation that he didn't love his daughter, Tohiro felt something snap within him and before he had realized what he'd done, his daughter was lying on the floor in a heap, tears streaming down her face and her hand holding a red cheek. He stared for a moment at his hand in horror and then looked at his daughter who made no noise despite her tears.

He hated himself for letting anger seize him. Fear was all he could see in her eyes now, not the previous anger that had taken hold. The skies had cleared outside, the brief unnatural ten-minute storm dispersing quickly. How could he have done that to his precious little girl, he wondered of himself. He truly loved her more than anything, yet he had just let aggression take hold of him in a manner that was more characteristic of Ai than himself. Never in his life had he lost his cool.

Until now.

"Go to your room!" he heard himself yell at her, and she was gone in an instant. She didn't know her father only wanted the best for her, and for her to be the best and that was why he was so hard on her. To her, it only felt like her father had just stepped off the idealistic pedestal she'd had him on and become something she was unnaturally afraid of. Fear wasn't something she was used to, as she had never been afraid of anything in her brief nearly-eight years to her knowledge, but already she could tell it wasn't an emotion she liked very well.

Kagome found her first floor training room and let out an anguished sob to find it empty of training equipment. She ran to the slide to the second floor and scraped her way up it, finding the same reaction when her second floor training room was also empty of everything. Her bedroom was exactly the same on the third floor, which was a small comfort, but as her total distress settled in, Kagome tore off the pendant her mother had given her and threw it across the room. It bounced and then rolled, dragging the chain after it before coming to a stop by the desk.

The simple action of taking off the pendant seemed to have worn her out because it was all Kagome could do then to crawl across the giant room and climb up onto her giant bed, becoming nothing more than a tiny ball under the covers.

A few hours later in the dark evening hours, a flash like lightning lit up Kagome's darkened room, and a figure appeared seated on Kagome's desk. The breeze from the window a servant had foolishly left partly opened toyed with the figure's black hair and loose cloak. Bright eyes the color of molten lava scanned the room for a moment before coming to rest on a lump under the blankets on the bed.

The young boy's lips turned down in a frown and he slid off the desk, taking off the half-cloak and placing it on the back of the chair, then untying the hefty weapon from his back and leaning it up against the wall. The lightning-shaped blade attached to the end of the staff he'd come to call Raigekijin made a pockmark in the wall but he hardly cared.

Slowly he bent down and rubbed his sore feet. He'd come across several continents in the effort to get where he was, with very little hope for a positive outcome considering his last visit hadn't gone well. The light from the moon reflected off an object on the floor and he reached out to pick it up, wincing as he saw what it was.

"Maybe she does hate me…" he whimpered before his hand closed around the lightning bolt shaped gem he'd carved. Hoping it wouldn't be true, he crossed the room with determination and climbed up onto the bed.

The minute his movements shook the bed, the light sleeping child was kicking back the covers and she'd thrown herself at him in attack mode and a moment later, the two were wrestling as her instincts kicked in. Soon he managed to pin the young girl, his hands holding her wrists over her head and sitting on her waist to hold her in place. No amount of struggling would get her free, but soon he didn't need to hold her so tight because she stopped and stared at him wide-eyed.

He was disappointed at her words. "You—who are you!" No hint of recognition was in her voice. Letting go of her wrists, he fell off her and sat beside her. "What fiend is invisible?" She really had been acting on instinct; she hadn't even registered who it was that snuck up on her in bed.

He threw his lip out in a pout, wishing things had gone differently. "I'm not a monster, ya know. Damn it, Kagome, why'd you have to grow up?"

Kagome was confused, because she couldn't see whatever was talking, but she could feel and hear it. Her gut told her she should summon Quezecotl and destroy the invisible creature, but her heart wouldn't let her. Something in the way the creature spoke halted her, but she still brought her hand to the bracer on her left wrist, touching the stone for comfort.

"What'd'ya mean?"

"I mean, the spell, Kagome! When you grow up, you're less likely to see me if you don't want to. Obviously you don't want to see me, because you can't."

Still confused, Kagome reached out to the empty space in front of her in the darkened room and shockingly enough, the tips of her fingers ghosted along what felt like skin. He let her touch his face, and she felt along his cheekbone, gently ran a finger over a closed eye-lid, moved her hand along his jaw and touched chapped lips lightly memorizing the feel of his features.

He saw the bracer on her arm then and noticed the summoning stone. Reaching out to the girl, he grasped her wrist gently and she felt fingers touching her arm but couldn't see the hand attached to it. Pondering the possibilities that a fiend got into her room and was going to try eating her, she thought again about summoning Quezecotl.

"Kagome… you don't remember me, do you?" he asked her.

"If I did, I wouldn't ask who you are!" she grumbled irritably, her earlier argument with her parents coming back to her. All of her classroom instructors praised her for being so smart and quick to catch on. Just because she made third in math and was wretched at all physical evaluations didn't mean her father had to slap her, did it?

Knowledge of it seemed to only further project the fact that obviously her parents hated her. Why else would they have a new child? What really bothered the young girl was that not only did the child bring her parents together more than she ever managed, but they didn't even bother to tell her. No letter, no call, nothing.

"It's me, Kagome… Hiten… Don't you remember?"

"I'm still asleep," Kagome said suddenly and then laughed. He found himself smiling despite his distress; her laugh always brought a smile to the young fiend's face.

"You shouldn't use this, Kagome…" he said, wanting to rip off the bracer with its summoning stone. "Guardian Forces can make you forget things more and more until you don't remember. That's why you can't remember me! Don't you remember, you freed me from the presidential palace where they were keeping me."

Kagome shook her head. "I don't remember what you want me to… I'm sorry."

Hiten reached out and wrapped his arms around the pudgy girl's waist, surprising her as she was hugged and a face was buried in her shoulder. "Don't you remember? You're my little ugly duckling…"

She gasped as he called her that, but a memory surfaced simultaneously so instead of punching him like she would've if he'd been Seifer, her arms wrapped around the invisible figure's neck. "A swan," she mumbled in his ear, feeling him hug her a bit tighter. "You called me a swan… and you looked like me."

"Uh huh," he said.

Biting her lip, the little girl apologized, "I don't remember you more…"

"The memories will come back if you don't use a GF for a long time, I promise…"

"Why do they go away?" Kagome asked, hoping Hiten would know. She liked Quezecotl, but if she was forgetting things because of the lightning-bird, she was less sure of using him. Not that she'd really be able to keep on using him. She'd have to give him back to school anyway, since her parents wouldn't let her go back.

"It's punishment for a forced enslavement," Hiten explained, still hugging her tight. Since she wasn't getting out of the hug, Kagome decided to shift herself into his lap rather than be awkward and uncomfortable. "A long time ago, some fiends would willingly give themselves to special humans so they could summon them if they needed help. But a crazy human with a lot of magic sealed a bunch of fiends and made it so they had to help any human who asked it. Then every human was summoning, and humans used the GFs to hurt other humans. A while later, another human with a lot of magic managed to locate most of the sealed GFs and hid them away in a mountain somewhere, where no one would ever find them."

Kagome threw her lip out into a pout. "So Quezy is punishing me too?"

"What do you mean, 'too'?"

"Mother and father won't let me go to school anymore, 'cause I'm stupid and they hate me." Kagome said bitterly. She surprised even herself as she called her parents formal names rather than informal 'mama' and 'papa' like she had always done.

"You're not stupid!" Hiten said heatedly. He released her enough that he could grab the previously discarded pendant he'd made and settle it around her neck. "You're smarter than either of them nags!"

Kagome looked at the pendant as it appeared on her chest. "I cast magic by accident; that's not smart." Kagome argued.

"Yeah, well, so what? I do dumb stuff all the time. Mize's always tellin' me to stop misbehavin'."

Kagome didn't argue further, but instead a yawn crashed through her body. "Will you tell me about you?" she asked of the boy.

Hiten paused and looked down at her. Then he shrugged and started to remind her of their past, from times she forced him to dance with her to times he melted a courtyard of heavy snow into a giant puddle for her. Soon, though, she had fallen asleep and he was just maneuvering her back under the covers—surprised that she didn't wake up, but expecting that was just how much she trusted him—when the door opened.

He froze, having been about to crawl under the covers with her like usual. When he saw Kagome's mother walk into the room, her chin held high in confidence, he felt nervous. She held a small box in her hand, no bigger than a necklace would be, and she looked precisely where he was. It probably looked odd to her, how the blankets would be dented yet nothing was there in the moonlit room but her sleeping child.

"Did you enjoy your time, Hiten?" Ai asked with pursed lips.

He scowled. She did know he was there; she was the reason he had left the last time, and now he had no doubt she was going to say a few words that he wouldn't like much. "You weren't as fast coming in this time." He sneered quietly, knowing how much arguments upset his friend he didn't Kagome to wake up to one.

"Perhaps not, but you won't be hurting her will you?" Ai's lips turned up in a smirk as she tossed that small box on the bed. "A gift, Hiten. For her, yes, but one you most certainly will enjoy as well."

Curious, Hiten reached for the box, but he regretted opening it. Inside was a small sapphire shaped like a tear drop and smooth as a baby's bottom. The spell it emitted was less pleasant. It was a shrill, painful ringing in his ears and it was all he could do to keep from crying out and waking the girl who slept.

He stumbled away from the box, but the pain was simply intense. "Damn hag," he spat and retreated to grab his cloak and Raigekijin, and with a flash of light, he had left. Her mother approached the bed and pressed the jewel into Kagome's fingers, the unconscious girl clutching it tight.

The next morning, Kagome crawled out of bed, feeling as though she'd had the weirdest dream ever. The imaginary friend Maria had been talking about had come to her. The strange thing she couldn't comprehend as she sat up in her oversized bed was the little sapphire in her fingers. It elicited such a calming and pleasant hum, not to mention it was the same shade as her eyes.

Climbing out of bed, Kagome got dressed in clothes a bit too tight and small for her; apparently she'd gained weight over the year. Still, Kagome liked the little jewel and the warm feeling it left in her so she attached the leather strip it was tied to onto a belt loop of her pants and then noticed how her lightning bolt pendant was on again.

She'd been so sure she threw it across the room. Chalking it all up to a very strange dream, she slid down to the first floor and made her way to the kitchen where Maria was preparing her breakfast already.

"Good morning, child," Maria said, with no words to say about the bruising on Kagome's face.

"Morning, Maria," she said, feeling subdued as the previous night came back to her. "Did father say when my new tutors are supposed'ta come?"

"They'll be here Monday morning." Maria confirmed. She placed a plate with an omelet on it in front of Kagome.

Kagome felt a little bitter as she said, "At least the food won't be bad. I always like your food, Maria."

"I know, dear…" Maria sighed and gently ran her thumb over the dark purple bruise on Kagome's cheek. Kagome remained eating in silence and soon Maria drifted back to her busy work, cleaning up the mess made to make Kagome's breakfast.

Finishing up her breakfast, Kagome thanked Maria for it and left the kitchen. Despite being barefooted, Kagome made her way to the front door and pushed the button on the panel that would open the door. She didn't exactly know what she was going to do outside—she never played outside at home before because she always hunted fiends inside—but her parents had a giant yard all enclosed in a giant fence with a wrought iron gate at the end of the drive.

Really uncertain what to do, Kagome walked around for a while thinking about her dream the night before. In it, Hiten had claimed that Quezecotl would make her forget things. A part of her wanted to forget how much it hurt her both physically and mentally to be hit by her father. She looked at the summoning stone and then brought her arm up level with her chest, touching the tips of her right hand to the stone on her left wrist bracer.

Instantly the sky above began to darken, an ominous looking cloud being born high above the Higurashi manor as Kagome summoned her GF. The wind whipped her long hair around her. Ashe usually kept it in a braid, but Kagome didn't know how to put it in one so it remained free to dance about as thunder clapped from the clouds and lightning built up until Quezecotl could be born from a single strike that tore into the ground.

She ran toward where the lightning would strike, hoping to greet the giant lightning-bird, but didn't realize what a mistake that would turn out being, and a few seconds later the thunder clapped and the lightning struck where she stood awaiting him, absorbing into her skin as the pendant made it do. A gasp escaped her lips as Quezecotl's summoning went oddly wrong, and Kagome felt herself tearing up inside.

There was too much magic, and too much lightning. She was burning but it was from the pendant's ability to turn lightning into life magic. The pendant reached its limit and lightning was all that was left, shooting down from Quezecotl's cloud continuously and then soon there was less pain and the feeling was more of a rush. Her cheeks flushed and her breath quickened. For a moment, everything was bright white and her vision cleared.

Everything was sharper, more detailed. Where was Quezecotl, she wondered, trying to stand to look for him but then falling over. A shriek and a scream both emitted from her throat, harmonizing with each other while simultaneously seeming in discord, and pain stretched through her as she landed on her back.

She tried to roll, but something wouldn't let her. Turning her head, she found the missing GF, or at least part of him. "Quezy, lemme go!" she cried out, that same shrieking emitting from her throat even as she spoke.

The sky was still dark overhead as Kagome's mother rushed out of the house, having been alerted to what happened by one of the servants who'd seen it happen out the window. "Oh, my baby, what happened?" her mother cried, picking the child up and noticing the odd new characteristics to the girl.

Kagome's eyes had strange olive green markings like arrows practically painted on her flesh, both pointing at each other. Markings in the same color wrapped around her arms, and her eyes themselves were shaped more like that of a bird. Wings protruded from her back of a leathery lime green, with the same olive green markings on Kagome's arms on the top curve of the wings, and the bottom tips of the wings were a dirty orange with three olive markings horizontal on each extra long orange tip.

Those bird-like eyes narrowed on Ai, and Kagome shrieked, "_Get away from me!_" She shoved at her mother, bird-like talons on her fingers leaving scratch marks on her mother's arm. Without her mother's support, Kagome fell backward again, but she managed to turn so she fell on her front side instead.

"Kagome, it's me… Mama," her mother pleaded at her.

Kagome glared at her mother coldly. "_I said go away! Go back to your new baby!_" The bird shrieking harmonizing with Kagome's voice scared both the mother and child, but Kagome's words hurt her mother more. Sure, she would love to curl up against her mama… but that woman just couldn't be her mother. Not the mama who always fought with her father, and gave Kagome whatever she wanted no matter how whimsical.

The young mother watched helplessly as her daughter struggled to crawl with those obviously heavy wings weighing on her. They _were_ very heavy, and Kagome had realized that something was very wrong. Quezecotl was _there_, but 'there' was _her_. She was Quezecotl, and Quezecotl was her.

She didn't know how it happened, but it did. Hoping to simply be able to unsummon Quezecotl, Kagome tried it; it failed to succeed.

The day proceeded with Kagome sitting on the ground, crying and continuously trying to unsummon Quezecotl as Ai went to get her husband to try talking to Kagome. Kagome only flinched away from him, so they tried to get the servants to get close to her. Maria blatantly refused, saying the parents needed to deal with the consequences of their actions on their own.

At that point, Tohiro tried to fire Maria, but Ai snapped at him. "Maria, you just go back to your work! Tohiro, if you fire her, I _will_ leave! And I _will_ take my children!"

That froze the older man and his eyes narrowed at Ai. No other servant dared to follow Maria's example, but after the fifth one earned deep gashes on her arms, the servants were sent away. "Then what, exactly," Tohiro hissed at his young wife, "do you suggest we do? Sleep outside?"

"I haven't a problem with it!" Ai spat.

He pressed his glasses up his long nose and sniffed haughtily. He turned to look at the young girl, anger building up in him. "Sleeping outside will not solve this problem." He determined. "I will contact my father. He is known highly for his expertise on magic."

"You will _not_ set your bloody father on _my_ daughter!" Ai shouted at the engineer. "I won't have him performing more experiments on Kagome!"

"What would you have me do?" Tohiro demanded. "He was the one who reversed whatever she's done to herself the last time."

"If you hadn't slapped her"—Kagome screamed/shrieked as her parents started to arguing once more. Over her. Because of her.

She wanted to leave. She wanted to go far away from them. The heavy feeling on her body disappeared and tufts of wind curled around her as those green, leathery wings flapped powerfully. Quezecotl was carrying her up, up, faster than her parents could catch, and in moments she was flying over the city. Her father lived in a special area of the city, carefully crafted to simulate true ground-level accommodations with a tended grass lawn, but she realized as Quezecotl took her away from there, her home was on nothing more than a platform.

The colorful city was huge, all platforms and floating roads and people flying through tubes. She saw vehicles like she'd seen in Galbadia and Balamb, sort of, but these vehicles hovered with no wheels to hold them up. "_Quezy, where are we going?_" Kagome asked and her eyes fixed on a large airship ahead of her. She sniffled and let the GF take her away.

All she ever did was make her parents argue, and when they were happy she had to go and ruin that and make them argue again. Quezecotl set her down gently in front of the airship station. The wings that had seemed so heavy before now felt light as feathers and Kagome rushed into the station, around people who stared at her in disbelief. If she got on one of those airships, she understood enough to know she could get away from Esthar City, and maybe get to school.

She was seized from behind before she could get too far in. Lightning magic exploded out of her body into not only her assailant but everything else around her. The power went out and Kagome screamed/shrieked as something heavy landed on her. Something happened, she wasn't quite sure what exactly caused it, but Quezecotl disappeared as if his time had expired.

When she woke, she was in an unfamiliar place far from where she was when Quezecotl disappeared. Scared momentarily over the loss of the lightning-bird, Kagome reached out and gripped her left arm bracer, bringing it to her eyes. The stone was still very firmly lodged in the leather, and it wasn't damaged. A slight shock of electricity tickled her fingers soothingly as she touched the stone, bringing a smile to her face.

Quezecotl was okay. She was glad about that.

Sitting up in the small bed, Kagome looked around the room she was in. It was bare of many furnishings that were regular in her own bedroom. It was mostly just a simple bed, a standing closet, and a bedside table with a lamp, alarm, and glass of water on it.

Sliding out of the bed, Kagome was alarmed to find herself dressed in a revolting pink nightgown. She _hated_ pink. It was a girly color. Making a face at the outfit, she curiously crossed the room and stood before the door, waiting a moment to see if it would open on its own. When it didn't, she realized it was like her bedroom door at home, with a regular door knob.

Opening the door, Kagome poked her head out into a hallway and with no indication of where to go, she decided to explore. She had no idea where her clothes or her lightning bolt pendant was, and the comforting teardrop sapphire was also absent.

At the end of the hall, she reached another door behind which she could hear noises. Poking her nose through it, her eyes went wide. Young girls a bit older than she was were throwing small knives into targets at the end of the room. "Great Hyne!" she gasped, using language learned from Seifer.

Walking into the room, she found herself practically star-struck, her normal dark blue eyes glistening as she eagerly drank in the sight of these girls training. She was so caught up counting how many girls hit the red dot at the end of the room, she didn't notice the person approaching her until they were cheerfully upon her.

"Hi there!" Kagome jumped slightly and turned, her eyes going up to the happy face of a woman with short black hair and brown eyes. She was dressed oddly, in white button fly shorts and a green top that lacked a stomach or sleeves. Huge brown gloves covered her hands, and a strange sort of contraption was on her left arm, just as she had some sort of brace on her left thigh.

Rather than asking where she was, which was probably what Kagome ought to do, Kagome prodded curiously, "What's that on your arm?"

The woman grinned openly. "Ah, this?" she asked, indicating the billowy white sleeve attached to a metal brace near her shoulder. "It's a special armor I designed. Coupled with the magic spells attached to it, it's fire resistant, flexible as cloth, and tough as steel! Had it ten years now. How're ya feelin'? Ya weren't looking so good when Paine brought ya in."

"I feel okay," Kagome said and so long as she didn't think about her parents it was true enough. "But, um, where is my necklace?"

"Didja have one?" she asked thoughtfully. Kagome nodded. "Well, Paine probably—"

The woman paused as the door Kagome had come through opened up. A woman with very strange red eyes and brown hair stepped through the way, wearing leather garments and too many belts. Around her neck she wore three necklaces, one an image of a lion's head atop a partial celtic cross with a sharp point at the base, another a leather choker with silver buttons, and a third looked to be made of barbed wire upon which hung a strange pendant Kagome thought looked a bit like a weeping flower but couldn't really be sure on.

"There you are," she intoned almost as if it were habitual to speak without emotion. Her eyes were on Kagome, so the young girl knew she was talking about her. "Come, we have much to discuss."

She held out a leather gloved hand to Kagome, and she instantly took it feeling as though she could trust the stranger. She couldn't even explain that feeling. She went with the woman and the cheerful black haired woman chirped, "Okay, bye!"

Kagome was led through the plain halls and into a small office as plain as the rest of the building she had seen. The red eyed stranger didn't sit at the desk, but rather offered Kagome a seat in front of the desk and leaned casually against the surface of it.

After a long, contemplative moment of silence, Kagome couldn't stand it anymore and asked, "Do you know where my necklace is?" The silent woman plucked a small pouch off her desk and dangled it off one gloved finger. "Can I have it back?"

"If you answer a few questions…" the woman nodded.

Smart enough to know when a bargain could be hazardous to make, Kagome eyed the woman sternly and leaned back in the chair. "If you don't give it back and I get mad, I might hurt someone. I have to wear it to protect others as much as me."

The woman frowned. "I knew I had the right one." She tossed the pouch to Kagome. Dumping the contents out into her lap, Kagome put on her special lightning bolt pendant and held the comforting tear drop in her hand.

Looking up at the woman inquisitorially, she asked, "Right what?"

"My name is Paine, and I was in the air station when the power went out. When I saw you being held captive by an unconscious soldier, I knew you were most likely responsible for the power outage so I brought you here."

"Why would you think I did it?" Kagome began nervously, automatically fingering Quezecotl's stone.

Paine's head jerked toward the summoning stone Kagome was playing with. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out you've junctioned Quezecotl, and that means an overload of electricity to anything if you summon him."

"Oh… right…" Kagome looked down at the stone. "Where am I now?"

"This is the Gullwings' School for Girls. More specifically, a school for girls' self defense, teaching the young women of the Esthar's poorer levels to be more educated and more offensive about being defensive." That explained a little bit about Kagome's location. She was in Esthar, at least, though she still had no idea where exactly that was in the city. "What's your name?"

"Oh, um, my name is Kagome." Struck with a sudden idea, Kagome asked, "Can I learn from here?"

Paine raised an eyebrow but shrugged. "I'm sure your family is awaiting your return," she said.

Instantly a lie burst from Kagome's lips and she could hardly believe she dared to speak it. "I don't have a family. I'm an orphan." Well, she didn't have a normal family, and as her family seemed to hate her she figured she was as good as orphaned.

Paine regarded her for a long moment before shrugging again. She didn't speak on the subject of Kagome being an orphan, but she figured she would just check into it anyway. However, that would probably take weeks, so the woman felt obligated to do something to keep the child occupied. And lessons would never do a child harm—especially when they wanted to learn.

"I suppose. I'll have Rikku get you some new clothes to wear, and tomorrow you can join our other students until I figure a few things out."

Internally Kagome was very excited. Had she managed to somehow find the 'Rikku' her SeeD Instructor Yuna told her to contact?

The next morning, Kagome was up at her usual time before dawn. Silently she missed her books but it was a price she was going to have to pay for running away and not wanting to go back. She joined the ranks of the other students and they actually welcomed her presence instead of calling her ugly like everyone else she'd encountered, minus Squall.

She had an interesting variety of teachers. Penelope taught reading and writing which after a few days Kagome was removed from the class because Penelope simply didn't have more to teach the girl half her age. Aeris taught math and again Kagome was removed from that class because Aeris didn't have any more knowledge to teach Kagome. Instead, Kagome taught Penelope and Aeris a thing or two about the things they were trying to teach and they were avid learners even if their teacher was half their age. Having to grow up in the slums and being self-taught on both women's parts, their knowledge had been less than Kagome's was when she was six.

Her physical lessons involved Yuffie teaching her to throw small weapons and objects into a target (which she delighted to find she was pretty good at actually hitting the target, although getting the pointed end to stick was more than challenging to make up for it), and Rikku who taught her a combination of hand-to-hand combat mixed with using a small curved dagger (which she was excellent at cutting herself with). Neither Yuffie nor Rikku ever let out an exasperated sigh at her lacking capabilities like the SeeD Instructors often had, and their cheerful attitudes spurned on all the students to keep up the great work.

In addition to those few classes, Paine took Kagome aside every evening after dinner and gave Kagome additional instruction on GFs. On July 23, Kagome's birthday, as Paine took her aside after dinner the child noticed the woman's usually emotionless face was slightly strained. She pulled her into a different room than their usual classroom and knelt in front of Kagome, taking off the pendant of the lion's head on a partial celtic cross and she clasped it around Kagome's neck.

"How come you're giving this to me, Paine?" she asked the older woman.

"This pendant is Griever… She's a GF… I know right now you won't understand what I have to do and that you're happy here, but I don't have a choice. That's why if you ever, _ever_, need help… I want you to summon her. Junction her now, Kagome, okay?"

Confused, Kagome looked at the pendant that rested next to her lightning bolt gem. "But it's not a summoning stone. GFs need a summoning stone."

"No, not all of them… But you mustn't tell anyone about Griever. She has to be our secret. Just do the same with that as you do for a summoning stone."

Kagome nodded and after a moment she proceeded to junction Griever to herself. As an afterthought, she asked, "If I ever saw my friend Squall again, could I tell him? I promise he won't tell anybody. He never talks to anybody really anyway."

A small smile tilted Paine's lips uncharacteristically and she nodded. "Alright, but no one else. Now tuck it under your shirt and keep it there. Don't let anyone see it." Kagome did so and Paine took her hand. They walked to their usual classroom, but awaiting her was a sight Kagome didn't enjoy. Her parents, quite impatient and unhappy, were both pacing.

Kagome hid behind Paine's legs at the sight of her father, unable to control her apprehension. He looked so angry. Noticing Kagome's fear, Paine's lips pursed and her red eyes narrowed. Her eyes switched between the mother and father, then moved to land on Laguna Loire, president of Esthar.

"Laguna," she said crisply in greeting, at which the president scratched the back of his neck and grinned ruefully.

"Hey, Paine…" he said, slouching a bit.

Kagome noticed the president, and instead of rushing to her parents, she rushed to the klutzy man. "'Guna," she cried, ignoring the tears flowing down her mother's face and the even angrier look on her father's face as she went to Laguna. Instantly Laguna knelt to meet the child's desperate need for loving attention, wrapping his arms around her in a tight, warm hug.

"Come on, little warrior," Laguna whispered in her ear too low for her parents to hear. "Everything's going to be okay… don't cry…"

"I don't wanna go home," Kagome cried.

"I know… But things will be better now… I promise…" Laguna said and he carried Kagome out of the room, leaving Paine alone with the two parents. He carried her out of the building, and Kagome didn't recognize the place she was in as Esthar. Tear stained eyes glanced around her at the dark place they were in.

"Where are we, 'Guna?" she asked, removing an arm from his neck to rub her eyes. This place was nothing like the Esthar she flew over with Quezecotl. The walls were covered in strange block writings, and the ground was covered in filth. The people were dirty and starved, some went without clothes, most went barefoot. Above them, Kagome could see all the floating platforms that were roads and layers of the city. Her parent's house was probably all the way at the top.

"This is a portion of the city I wish you'd never had to see, little one," he told her, holding her tight. "But, in a way, I'm glad you did. Life isn't all about the pleasantries we have up there. Down here, people have to make due with very little. Its visibly dangerous down here, while up there we disguise the danger with beauty, intrigue, and politics."

"You knew Paine." Kagome said. "Did you fall down here and meet her?"

"Not quite," he chuckled. "When I was a little boy your age, Paine and I lived together. After a while, she moved here and became the headmistress of the Gullwings' School for Girls." At that point, Kagome's parents exited the school. Kagome noticed her father was looking less angry and more frightened than anything. He was rubbing his neck slightly.

Without looking at Kagome, he stalked off to an awaiting vehicle and got in. Ai looked scared as well, but not as much as Kagome's father had. She approached Kagome, but the child only shrunk into Laguna's grasp further. Laguna's expression twisted into one Kagome thought looked remarkably similar to Yuna's when she spoke of her friend Tidus.

Laguna reached out with one hand, running it along Ai's cheekbone gently. "You don't have to stay…" Laguna told her mother, and a tear fell beyond the barrier of her eyelids. Kagome silently watched the exchange; she had always been curious by it when he would come over and spend time with Ai while her father was away. Laguna usually had a present for Kagome, most often being a simple lolli, but then the two adults would retreat behind closed doors and Kagome never knew what the two spoke of.

"Don't do this…" Ai whispered, her words objecting but her face leaning into the hand cupping her cheek. "It's over… It has to be…"

Laguna shook his head, "It doesn't have to be… He blew his top once, Ai, and how long will it be before he does it again? I've seen this before… I don't want to watch it be you. He'll kill you, Ai. You and the kids can—"

Ai cut him off, addressing Kagome. "We should get going home, sweetie… if we don't hurry, you won't be ready in time to make it back to Garden for school." With a heavy sigh, Laguna retracted his hand from the woman's cheek.

Kagome warily looked at her mother before narrowing her eyes. "You're just saying that." She accused the woman.

Her mother shook her head and reached into her purse, pulling out a pair of tickets. "No, darling. Laguna promised to take you to school; I have your travel schedule right here."

Kagome looked at Laguna for confirmation. He smiled at her. "She's right. I have to go to Balamb Garden anyway, so I offered to take you."

Kagome smiled and hugged Laguna's neck tight. "Then I'll go home with _you_ 'till its time to go to school."

Laguna looked at a loss, but Ai quickly agreed, her eyes darting to the vehicle. "Maybe that's a good idea… Perhaps you could just stop by and pick up her things on the way? I'll have a bag packed…"

Unable to get out of it, and still helpless to the situation, Laguna agreed. Ai hurried to Tohiro's awaiting vehicle and got in, and in moments it was driving away. Laguna moved to the awaiting cab he'd ridden down in and helped Kagome in, then got in himself.

Kagome was delighted to spend three days at Laguna's set of apartments in the presidential palace. When they stopped at Kagome's house to get Kagome's suitcase, Maria came with them to keep an eye on Kagome while Laguna was working, but once he was finished for the day—though it was late—he still played games with Kagome. Her favorite quickly became 'catch', because she was too fast for him to catch.

Each morning, she was up before the crack of dawn and she found his room fast as she climbed up to his bed to wake him. He would groan and then proceed to tickle her until smiling hurt her cheeks, then he'd get up and make Cactaur shaped Pancakes for both them and Maria. The servant was surprised to be asked by the president to join them for breakfast, but on Kagome's urging, she did so.

On July 27, Kagome and Laguna headed to the air station where they began the five day journey to Balamb Garden. In Balamb, Laguna called the school from the car rental and told them Kagome would be there shortly. Laguna then rented a car and the two proceeded to the school where Ashe was waiting for them at the gate.

Kagome was disappointed to find Squall was not there with Ashe. "Where's Squall?" Kagome asked the woman.

Ashe looked Laguna up and down, memorizing the man for future reference before answering. "We'll see him soon, don't worry." She turned to address Laguna, asking, "And you are? I was expecting her parents or nanny again."

Laguna ruefully rubbed the back of his neck, not telling the chit that he was Esthar's president for simplicity's sake. "Friend of her mother's. But I was hoping to talk to headmaster Cid while I was here. It's a bit important." Despite that he didn't have to tell Ashe a thing about his business, he continued, "You see, I've been looking for a child; a specific one, for a while now. I was told all the orphans who survived an attack on Sorceress Edea's orphanage were brought here by SeeD."

Ashe pursed her lips. "Not all the orphans stayed here. Most of them had homes found for them, and only a few stayed in Balamb Garden. A couple were taken to Galbadia and Trabia Garden also. Headmaster Cid will be able to put you into contact with some, but finding any specific child after this long will be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Please follow me."

Kagome tugged her suitcase from Laguna and started to drag it after Ashe. Laguna smiled at the child's excitement. When they reached the stairs, Laguna went to help Kagome carry her bag up the steps, but she brushed him off saying, "I can do it all myself!"

Grinning at her determination, Laguna scooped Kagome and her suitcase up, swinging her over his shoulder. "Oh yeah?" he asked as she squealed with laughter, beating tiny fists on his back. "Then I can carry you _and_ your bag all myself!"

"Lemme down!" she laughed, and he did—_after_ they had climbed up all the stairs. He teased her by carrying her small suitcase just barely out of her reach. Ashe led them to the dorms and Kagome finally managed to take her suitcase from Laguna.

Laguna bent down on one knee and hugged Kagome, then kissed her forehead. "Well, you have a good year at school," he began, and Kagome planted a sloppy kiss on Laguna's cheek.

"You know it!" she chirped and then shoved him away from her, dragging her suitcase toward her usual bed. It was just as it had been when she left. Except one thing… A wilted blue flower lay on her bedside table beside her lamp.

Sighing in exasperation, Laguna approached her. "I'm tryin' to say goodbye, here, and ya walk away." He ran a hand through his hair, wincing as it got caught in a tangle. Despite being president, he still wasn't going to suffer brushing his hair.

"I don't say bye, 'Guna!" Kagome told him instantly. "Ashe, what's this?" She pointed importantly to the blue flower.

Ashe walked over, her heels clicking on the floor. "It's a Blue Ice Flower indigenous to the Balamb Mountains, inside the frozen cave of the Guardian Force Shiva."

Kagome scratched her head in confusion. "How come its here?"

"You'll have to ask Squall that," Ashe said.

Laguna sighed. "Geez, I feel all ignored," he teased the child, and Kagome immediately spun around to look at him. He grinned at her and pinched her nose. "Even if _you_ don't say goodbye, let me. Who knows when I'll get to see ya again. Haven't seen much of you since you were—what—_four?_"

The eight year old's eyes rolled. "Okay," she said pleasingly, and Laguna scooped her up and hugged her.

"Have a good year, little warrior." He kissed her forehead and tickled her briefly, eliciting giggles from her for it. Then he swiftly sat her on the bed and ruffled her long mane of hair. "Bye."

"Okay," Kagome agreed, unwilling to say the word.

Ashe looked at Kagome sternly. "Don't go running around. Stay in here until I come back. We'll go get you some uniforms when I get back, alright?"

Kagome nodded brightly. Within moments, she was alone in the ten-bed dorm room. She felt a pang of loss as Laguna left—one she'd never felt as her parents left. Completely ignoring it, she slid off her bed and continued to unpack her meager items. She only had a few outfits and her two books in the suitcase. The school uniform provided combat boots, so she needed to bring no other shoes than her traveling pair.

She shoved her suitcase under the bed and her two favorite books under her pillow. Heeding Ashe's instructions to stay, she went to the end of her bed and opened her trunk. New books had been added to it for the new year's courses. She read the titles of the books. _GF Theory 5_. _Magic 104_. _Fiendology 104_. _Geography 104_. _Level 8 Mathematics_. _Physical Science 104_. _Level 10 Language Arts_. Those were all simply more advanced classes of her previous years courses, the majority of them already more advanced than her fellow classmates because of her photographic memory. She was able to read things once, and remember it forever it seemed. Thanks to that ability, she was constantly ranked top of every class—except math, which two others in her class were better at. It was a shame she couldn't do the same with her physical courses. _Practical Applications: Computer Technology_ was a new subject, as was _Foreign Language Arts_.

Curious about the new courses, she passed over her favorite subject's—Fiendology—text book and pulled out the two new ones. She lay on her bed, first opening the computer technology text book. It was very complicated and had a lot of big words she didn't understand, but she muddled through several pages after locating a dictionary at the back of the book to reference.

After several pages, she had to stop reading and rub her eyes. A yawn escaped her; the subject, while interesting to her, was tough to understand. She closed the book and grabbed her foreign languages book. She found it to be less than interesting, but equally challenging as the computer course. She yawned again and rolled on her side, her hand going to grasp the lightning bolt gem, holding it as she lay her head down.

It was much earlier than her usual bedtime, but she couldn't help falling asleep, happy to be back at _home_.

* * *

**Thanks for reading/reviewing everyone! Any questions or comments will be welcomed openly!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Title: The GF Mage**

Author: Tsubasa Kya

_Disclaimer__: I own neither the "Inuyasha" universe, nor the world of "Final Fantasy". AU Inuyasha, AU FF8 (mainly because I'm not following FF8's story line). _

_YES—I am aware of how many stories I have going. I write what I'm interested in, and obviously I can't randomly stick Squall and company in any of my current stories so… Enjoy!_

**Chapter four**

Kagome rolled out of bed, surprised that she'd fallen asleep early in the day. She was used to being awake from early morning to late evening, even at her age. Yawning and stretching, she sat up and realized she'd been sleeping on her foreign languages book. Pressing a crease flat on a bent page, she looked around the room for her best friend.

She didn't see him but Quistis was sitting on her bed at the other end working on something with her glasses half falling off. She looked quite silly with spectacles almost as big as her head, but Kagome wasn't so callous to laugh at the girl.

While Kagome wouldn't laugh at the girl, though, she wasn't exactly friends with Quistis either. The high strung blond girl once made the mistake of calling Kagome fat, so Kagome had given Quistis a fat lip. Since then, they didn't talk and Quistis stayed as far from Kagome as possible.

Kagome still managed to get to school a couple days before most people would, so there were six people who hadn't yet filled her ten-bed dorm up. However, Squall's bed was made up neatly and his pajamas were carefully folded on his pillow where he always kept them during the day. Squall's area of the dorm was always very tidy and disciplined, unlike Kagome's which usually got to be rather messy.

As always, Seifer's bed was across the room… except it wasn't labeled 'Seifer Almasy' as it was ordinarily. His closet was empty except for his school issued uniforms and the school issued boots. He never had any non-issue clothes, but somehow the closet seemed a little bare, probably because the shoes weren't strewn along the bottom of the closet, and the uniforms were hung in a neat row. Seifer's class books weren't stacked up on the bedside table either.

Kagome frowned and looked at her bedside table again. Her hand reached out and touched the slightly wilted blue flower. She had to ask Squall about the flower. As she picked up the flower, she found herself rather surprised as a blue light encompassed her hand and the flower. The light was cold and tingly and the wilted flower seemed to rejuvenate from the light and it was soon encased in a thin layer of what seemed like ice.

"How…strange…" she murmured and examined the flower. It looked like a multi-faceted jewel… like her mother's diamond jewels, only a soft glacier blue color instead of clear. She could feel the magic flowing through herself and into the flower. She couldn't explain how she knew, but somehow she just _knew_ that the magic was _her_ doing.

It didn't excite her. She hated magic. She never wanted to use magic, but she could recall being the only person SeeD Lulu ever praised in class for her magic abilities. It didn't make a difference that none of the other students were allowed to even try magic yet. SeeD Lulu never praised _anyone_. She was as critical as anyone came and no one was ever spared the harsh lash of her whip-like tongue.

Until Kagome. For some insane reason, she liked Kagome despite that Kagome never lost the opportunity to tell her superior exactly what she thought of magic. She liked Kagome despite the fact that the little girl was always insubordinate.

Magic was for pansies, of course. Headmaster Cid couldn't keep her from the sword _forever_. And when that day came, Kagome would be fighting fiends out in the big and dangerous world without the help of magic. She'd do it with nothing but her sword and her best friend at her side. Obviously with her blade she would be as fast as lightning…

She flipped the flower in her hand, grasping it like a small blade just like Rikku taught her and tried the lunge-and-slice the woman was so fond of. Unfortunately she stubbed her toe on the bedside table and simply felt silly trying the motion. She quickly reached out and steadied the lamp and table, then looked to see if Quistis had seen her embarrassment. The other girl was rolling her eyes, probably wondering how long it would be before Kagome gave up trying to be a warrior.

Kagome wasn't stupid. She heard the whispers of the other students. They all thought she would eventually quit trying because she was so bad, and she never seemed to improve physically. Even Kagome knew physical achievements were the biggest part to success in her chosen career path, and honestly she was the worst there was. Book learning could only take her so far before a talon finished her off. At that point, as Paine had pointed out, a book wouldn't save her life.

She did very well at Paine's school, practicing with the other girls there. It was just that she couldn't become a warrior there. Not like she wanted to… Not like she could at Balamb… And certainly not with Squall…

Kagome narrowed her eyes at Quistis. "You got somethin' ta say, why don't ya say it, Goggles!" she shouted across the dorm and watched as Quistis turned her nose up and let out a faint 'hmph' before returning to her book work.

It was not a secret among the school; Kagome disliked most of the students, although the majority of them disliked her as well so she cared a lot less. It was especially easy to dislike the other cadets when they called her ugly and she had to beat them up.

That was one thing she was sure she would miss from the Gullwings' School for Girls. The other girls never looked at her for her size or beauty. They liked her. They smiled without reservations.

Kagome knew she was supposed to wait for Ashe to return from wherever she was at, knew she promised to, but she wasn't going to stay in the dorm with Queen-of-the-goggles-Quistis. She wanted to find her best friend and ask about the flower.

Rushing out of the dormitory hall, she thought the first place to look for him would be the cafeteria. If he was there, he was probably mopping for fighting with Seifer. Then again, there was a small chance he might be eating, but Kagome and Squall both spent more time in detention with SeeD Balthier than they did anywhere else.

She searched every nook and cranny of the cafeteria and yet she found no sign of Squall, but SeeD Balthier was there eating with several familiar faces. Kagome recalled a lot of the people who sat with Balthier had tried and failed to teach Kagome different fighting styles the prior year.

Nervous about talking to the adult who was always conducting her detention time, she hesitated. However, she was going to be a warrior, so she steeled herself and crossed the distance to him. When standing beside him didn't attract his attention, she tugged on his uniform jacket. He turned to look at her, and his face lit in surprise.

"Yo." He said in greeting.

Standing nervously at attention under her superior's gaze—in spite of the fact that she was the one to initiate the contact—she asked, "Do you know where Cadet Squall Leonhart is, Sir?" She wasn't sure if Balthier recalled who Squall would be, but she thought he would have to be dumb not to; they had detention with the SeeD on a daily basis it seemed.

"Well, look at you… Someone _finally_ taught you some discipline," Kagome thought of her father for a moment and how he had hit her and shouted at her. "At ease, Cadet Higurashi," Balthier chuckled when Kagome did not relax. It was surprisingly harder to just relax after being told 'at ease'. "Alright, I haven't seen him in a couple days now that you mention it. Must not be fighting with Seifer." Kagome noticed the different forms of address between herself and Seifer and wondered about it only briefly before dismissing the fact.

Kagome nodded nervously and—as if she'd been dismissed—she saluted to Balthier. Her unusual behavior caused him to lift an eyebrow, but she said, "Thank you, Sir!" and turned to march away.

Where could Squall be? She knew summer class time was over; it was dinner time. She thought maybe she might have just missed Squall. He could have left the cafeteria just before she got there, or even before she finished searching.

She was about to leave the cafeteria when the hairs rose on the back of her neck. She felt eyes on her. Turning, she scanned the cafeteria once more. Nothing… Squall better not be hiding from her, she thought. If he was, he would be in so much trouble. She'd chase him all the way to Esthar to beat him up if she had to!

Pursing her lips, she glanced down at the flower again. It was so strange… It was like a blue lily, and the ice wasn't melting with the heat of her hand. It remained cold and perfect… just a thin layer protecting the entire flower, but not changing the shape of it. Even the fact that the flower had thorns wasn't hidden within the ice, but it was instead accented.

Where _was_ he?

Thinking he might have gone back to the dorms if he had indeed been in the cafeteria, she ran back that way. Of course, students their age weren't _supposed_ to be out of the dormitory hall without their dorm assigned SeeD chaperoning them. However it was still summer. Students were still returning to the school. With the considerably smaller population—mostly just older students who wanted to get ahead in their studies—the chaperoning was more lax.

Kagome checked the dorm room for Squall, and then headed for the dormitory hall's recreation room when she didn't find him in the dorm. Students milled about; some practiced their hand-to-hand combat against the padded dummies, some played air hockey and foosball, and others grabbed nutritional snack bars and water from the concession attendant while they did their class work. None of these cadets were Squall.

Pouting, she left the dorm and checked the dormitory hall's outdoor courtyard. A few cadets milled about on the grass beneath the apple trees. Kagome knew none of them were Squall because _everyone_ knew the outdoor courtyard was for Senior Cadets. It wasn't a spoken rule, but was more something the Junior Cadets just learned to stay out of the outdoor courtyard or they would risk being pushed about.

She didn't go in, but kept herself peering around the edge of the outdoor courtyard's entryway. Kagome gulped slightly when she saw a senior cadet sitting alone with a book at one of the park benches. His name was Sephiroth. No one knew where he came from or anything about him, just that he was always silent and incredibly strong. Even his age and surname was a mystery at least to Kagome, but Kagome was sure he had to be under twenty. If he were older than that, he wouldn't still be a Cadet for the SeeD program which people said he was.

Kagome squeaked nervously when she found herself staring into his eyes and ducked back into the hallway. She cursed herself for being afraid of him. A warrior feared _nothing_, she told herself. Still… something felt _weird_ about him. A glance down at her hand was all she needed to kick herself back into motion and think of alternative options to find Squall.

Then she thought _summer lessons_. Squall had summer lessons to attend! And he probably had to practice more with Sir Auron… That meant he would be in the specially designed Gunblade Specialist training room in the Training Center!

Kagome made that her next destination. She ran as fast as she could, her grip on the ice flower tightening to where the thorns could scratch her palm a bit—not that she noticed.

As she approached the training center's main hall she slowed to a walk. She'd never actually _been_ to Squall's training room before but she was sure she could find it. Down the main hall just before two very large double doors was a smaller door on the left and one on the right. Squall had said those doors led to a handful of shooting ranges, but at the end of the right range was the Gunblade Specialist training room. She pulled on the door handle but found it wouldn't open for her. Next to it was a card reader, so she assumed she would only get in there with an ID that allowed entrance.

Throwing her lip out in a pout she muttered, "Figures."

Just as she was about to turn away, the door was roughly shoved open and knocked her aside. She winced and rubbed her behind, then realized her opportunity and instead of yelling at the older cadets to watch where they were throwing doors, she darted forward and grabbed the door, entering into another hallway lined with doors. She could hear soft 'popping' noises coming from behind the doors.

Walking toward the door at the end, she found it to be unlocked. She entered and frowned when she saw nothing of her best friend. The room was dark but there was light shining from an open doorway across the room. Maybe he was in there, she thought. She crossed the room, knowing full well that if she'd been wearing school issued shoes she would've clopped across the place. Instead she wore soft shoes that made no noise at all.

Halfway there she heard voices filtering toward her. "I will tell you I disapprove of your idea," said a deep male voice. The voice caused Kagome to pause in her step and wonder if she should come back later.

"Oh?" That voice was recognizably the headmaster's. Kagome was in trouble enough with him to never forget his voice. Kagome turned around, figuring she wasn't about to give up the opportunity to ask Auron about Squall but at least she could wait out side in the training hall since she surely had to run into him when he came out. However, the headmaster's voice stopped her as he said, "I fear it is for the best. It is not a matter of whether Squall is a Sorcerer any longer; we couldn't be sure which of the three had received Edea's powers and now that we know which one we must keep him safe."

Kagome turned to look at the light beaming into the training room from Sir Auron's office. Squall was a _what_? Her mouth formed the word… _Sorcerer_… Knowing what that was wasn't hard. SeeD Lulu taught them about Sorceresses and Sorcerers; they were humans with a special affinity to magic. For the most part, these humans ran magic shops. They would 'bottle' magic for the use of ordinary people who couldn't use magic. According to SeeD Lulu, the business was very profitable.

Kagome moved closer to the office, wondering who Edea had been and what her best friend had to be protected from. Whatever tried to hurt her best friend, she would always be there to protect him obviously. Squall was the damsel and she was the knight, after all.

"Is it really the boy you wish to protect, Cid?" Auron's deep voice inquired. Kagome pondered what that statement was to imply.

Cid responded, "I fear what may happen if we allow young Squall to continue in his training with a Gunblade. I do not think it wise to give him power for the day yet to come. Should he lose himself, I believe we would all be in grave danger."

Kagome gasped but then quickly covered her mouth to silence herself. Was Cid really thinking of stopping Squall's training with the Gunblade? He wouldn't dare! Squall would be so upset! …Or… maybe not… Squall didn't ever tell her what he thought about being a SeeD… Did he even want to be one? Would Squall _really_ be a danger to people because he was a Sorcerer?

"You are rather quiet, Auron… even for your nature… Did you have something to say?" Cid asked.

"You know the Magic Guild is already rather angry Garden started to use Guardian Forces."

"I come to you with an open mind, Auron… What are you thinking?"

Kagome inched forward more, leaning against the wall just beside the door frame. She was both nervous and anxious to hear more. She knew she should not be listening in. It was not a conversation meant for her ears, and yet there she was… hearing it.

"Cadet Leonhart is a troubled, cowardly orphan." Kagome's fists clenched and she ground her teeth, ordering herself not to burst into the office and scream at Auron for saying such rude things about her friend. Sir Auron continued, "He is dispassionate about his training and in my opinion, he works only to the extent that he is ordered. He will forever be nothing more than acceptable as a fighter. I believe he still has nightmares of the day the orphanage was attacked, and because of that he still fears fiends to the extent that he will freeze on the battle field against a fiend."

"This is your professional opinion, Auron?" Cid asked.

Kagome heard movement and wondered if she was about to be caught, but it sounded more like someone leaning back in their chair. It was a few moments before Auron spoke again. "Yes, Cid. The boy is quiet and I have observed real emotion from him only in the presence of Cadet Almasy and Cadet Higurashi."

"I see… and what action do you propose in this situation?" Cid sighed, "As you know, Auron, I must take extra care with this… Squall should have not only his own power as a Sorcerer, but Edea's will have joined with his. Edea was rather powerful on her own as you know…"

"I would recommend continuing to observe Squall. It would please the Magic Guild if he were allowed to become SeeD. It would show them we are not a mercenary force that exists solely to kill the Natural Magi. You can learn what kind of person he is by observing his enemies and his friends. I do not know enough of Cadet Higurashi to formulate an opinion on what influence she would have upon Cadet Leonhart. I do believe Squall chose a proper rival in Cadet Almasy."

"Young Kagome… she is quite the problem as well… Her father has written to me, wishing to become an official sponsor of the school. With the money he wishes to contribute we could easily pay off NORG, and still move on to more projects…"

"What does he wish in return for his contribution?" Auron mused.

"Only that his daughter is successfully made into a SeeD."

Kagome frowned. She wasn't sure why her father had to give the school more money just so she could be a SeeD… Why did they have to pay the school? Or was her father just paying the school to _say_ she became a warrior?

Auron asked, "Where is the problem with that, Cid? Is the girl lethargic or dim-witted?" Kagome felt her teeth grinding. No, she wasn't!

"Oh, no, no, she's the brightest child her age… At the rate she excels in her studies, she'll be taking Senior Classes by age ten, I'm sure… No… the problem is that I believe she is a Natural Magi…" Kagome's eyes went wide. Did the headmaster really think so highly of her schooling? She supposed her class books were rather advanced this year… did that mean in a couple years she would be stuck in classes with all the older cadets? With cadets like Sephiroth… And without her best friend…?

"By Natural Magi, you mean…"

"No, no not like Squall… More like… Yuna. I believe young Kagome has the ability to convert her emotions into magic. I have witnessed her raise a very sturdy _Protect_ barrier when she felt threatened, and I believe she casts _Berserk_ upon herself when she is angry." Kagome knew all that… Cid had explained to her before that was why she wore her lightning bolt pendant…because the chain would absorb _Berserk_ magic.

"Yet you still seek my opinion…" Auron said. There was a moment of silence before Auron said, "Cadet Leonhart could be dangerous as all Natural Magi have the ability to be if they lose themselves. One way to find out if he will fold under pressure before he is a real danger would be to test him. If Cadet Higurashi is also a Natural Magi, it would be wise to test her as well, although it sounds like she'll probably lose her mind well before she could even make SeeD."

The words hit Kagome like an avalanche. Her hand automatically reached for the chain around her neck. The tourmaline gem was hidden beneath her clothes, and while her uniform usually hid even the chain, the plain clothes did not.

Grinding her teeth, she glared at the door. They could call her a Magi all they wanted, but they couldn't make her _be_ one. Just because Natural Magi were born with the ability to do magic, that didn't mean she had to _use_ it! She would show them all! She would prove to her father that his money wouldn't make her a SeeD, and she would prove to the stupid headmaster that she wouldn't go mad.

Kagome was going to storm away at that point and find someone _else_ to tell her where Squall was when once more Cid's soft, breathy voice stalled her. He said, "Have you finished your report of Squall's encounter with Shiva?" Kagome waited to hear more of this. After a moment, Kagome heard movement, like the sound of rustling papers. She wanted to know what Cid was reading but she wasn't about to risk being found if they weren't aware she was there. "Very interesting, Auron… This explains his injuries… I will make note of this…"

"Before you leave, Cid… I would like to recommend one more thing." Auron said, and Kagome knew she needed to get out of there quickly because from the sounds of movements they were going to be done with the conversation in a moment. As much as she wanted to know what they were saying, she couldn't wait because the footsteps were shuffling toward the door. Kagome hurried toward the exit and nearly ran into a couple of surprised older Cadets in the hall outside.

But at least she had gleaned one bit of information: Squall was hurt. That was probably where he was now… The pudgy girl ran for all she was worth toward the infirmary. Doctor Kadowaki was quite surprised by her abrupt appearance, but after a moment she put a hand on her hip.

"What have I told you about running? Are you trying to injure yourself again?" she asked in a teasing voice.

"Where is Squally?" Kagome demanded.

Doctor Kadowaki's brow furrowed and she wagged a finger at Kagome in admonishment. "Shush, child. Keep your voice indoors. We don't need Balamb's mayor coming over…"

"No, don't shush me," Kagome yelled. "I want Squally. I want Squally _now_."

Doctor Kadowaki sighed and waved to the seat by her desk. "Come, sit… I should explain something…"

The sad tone of the doctor scared Kagome but she held her chin up and put her hands on her hips. She wasn't moving until she was being taken to Squall, and that was final. The doctor would just have to understand that.

Doctor Kadowaki shrugged. "Alright." She then explained quietly, "Kagome, Squall is sick…"

"Sick?" Kagome looked around at each of the curtained off areas. Was Squall in one of those beds? She unconsciously kept her voice down, worrying she might disturb Squall now when it wasn't really an issue before. "How did he get sick?" She wondered if Squall was sick because he met Shiva the Guardian Force…

"About a week ago, his training master took him and Seifer out of Garden… Squall fell through a weak point in the ground into the Ice Cavern of Shiva. At first upon their return, Squall had Pneumonia but that was easily cured. Now, Squall simply doesn't do anything… He refuses to eat or drink…"

Kagome glared at the doctor. "Then you _make_ him! Sheesh, I have to do _everything_ around here! Where is he?"

"Well I won't let you see him if you're going to go yelling all about." Doctor Kadowaki put her hands on her hips and looked sternly down at the child. Kagome snapped her mouth shut, feeling her cheeks warm up. "That's better, child. If Squall were half as loud as you and you were half as quiet as him, I think the two of you might have something."

"I'm not loud," Kagome muttered and followed the doctor to one of the curtains surrounding her office space.

Doctor Kadowaki put her hand on the curtain but then said seriously, "You be extra quiet. He needs to rest." Kagome nodded and slipped between the curtains. The doctor followed her into the curtained area and set a seat just beside the bed. Leaning down over the bed, Doctor Kadowaki said, "Squall? There's someone here to see you…" Squall didn't respond.

Kagome moved to the chair and climbed up onto it. She looked at Squall and her eyes widened. He had fading bruises, and bite marks on his face, neck, and left arm. His right arm was in a plaster cast. He was curled up in the fetal position on the bed, staring straight toward Kagome with eyes that seemed to see nothing at all.

"Squally?" Kagome asked tentatively. She got no reply so she asked the doctor, "Why won't he say anything? And how come he's beat up? I thought fixing people was your job!"

"It's Sir Auron's orders, Kagome… his students are not allowed to be healed using magic, although he made an exception for the Pneumonia… and I don't know why he won't—"

She trailed off as Squall shifted, turning his eyes onto Kagome. She saw the frightened look he wore, and heard the scratching noise in his voice as he spoke for the first time in days. "Kagome, you're late…"

"Oh, dear me! I must inform the headmaster right away…" Doctor Kadowaki said but she bustled toward Squall instead and started preparing to examine him. Squall slapped her hand away. "Squall?" the older woman asked anxiously.

He said nothing, but looked down at the sheets of the bed. Kagome looked at Squall, then the doctor and told her, "Go away."

"Squall, I need to," the doctor began, but Kagome cut her off.

Kagome stood on the chair and jumped onto the bed. "Go _away_!" Kagome yelled at the doctor. The woman huffed but left the enclosure.

Squall tried to sit up, but Kagome saw he was unable to manage doing so. She helped him move the pillows to the best of her ability so he could prop himself up, and had him hold the Ice Flower while she did so. When her self set task was completed, Kagome situated herself beside him, staring intently at him.

Several moments of surprising silence passed before he scratched out, "You're upset…"

"I am not!" she said defensively before looking away from his blank stare. "Alright, fine… I am… But my best friend is hurt, so I should think I would be!" Squall looked away from her toward the curtain. "What happened?" She asked. She knew the story from the doctor, but that wasn't good enough for her. Not when she saw him… And so what if she was upset for more reasons than she was letting on, but who cared?

"It's none of your business," he attempted to say to her, although that certainly would _not_ fly with her.

"It's none of my _what_?" Kagome reached out and pinched the flesh on Squall's upper chest and he yelped. "Of _course_ its my business, you jerkface!" she yelled.

He shushed her quickly, "Keep it down, Kagome! You'll have the whole school listening in!"

"You bet I will! And I'll tell the whole school everything I just heard Headmaster Cid saying about you too, if you don't start talking!" Kagome bluffed.

Squall took the bait. "What did you hear?"

"Well _that's_ obviously not your business!" Kagome sniffed.

"It is too." Squall insisted.

"It is not, and times a million!" He was silent for several long minutes before he gave in. She was glad he did first, because she was about to do so herself.

"Alright fine, I'll tell you, but you have to spill too," he reasoned, his curiosity too much to ignore. She nodded in agreement to that compromise and watched as he glanced at the ice flower. It still wasn't melting. In fact, the ice appeared thicker than it had at first.

Squall began slow, his voice still sounding sore. "Sir Auron took me and Seifer into the mountains to camp and train in cold weather. We set up camp and Seifer and me fought each other and the ground gave out beneath me. I fell a long way into a cave that glittered with ice and all these flowers were everywhere."

Kagome took the flower from Squall, glancing it over. It was now encased in a spike. It only confirmed what she heard earlier about him. He had to be a Natural Magi, and his magic was probably strongly based toward ice. Did that mean hers was too, because she made the flower a bit iced as well? Her magic was probably not too strong at any rate, since Squall did a lot more with just his touch. Not that she wanted to be a Sorcerer anyway.

Squall continued, "My arm broke, and all these creatures came at me… I ran, Kagome… I know you'll think I'm a chicken but it was scary… Everywhere I go, fiends always are there to attack me. I… I'm scared of fiends… So I ran and kept running, and then… I can't really explain her better than to say she had to be a goddess…She came from the ice… just walked right out of it. She was three times as tall as Sir Auron, and she was _blue_, and she felt like ice… but the fiends went away and she said she was Shiva, but she didn't look like the same Shiva who Instructor Eiko summoned…"

Enthralled by the story thus far, Kagome leaned forward causing Squall to wince and move his leg out of the way. "Oh, sorry, Squally…" she murmured.

"Stop calling me that…" Squall complained.

"Squally," she muttered and stuck her tongue out at him.

"Kaggy." He countered and glared at her half-heartedly, but she just giggled at him.

"You look like my nanny when she's drinking prune juice." He stuck his tongue out at her and she said, "What? It's true!"

"_Any_way… If you're _done_ interrupting me like always…"

"I don't always!" she said, interrupting him. He gave her a pointed look and she blushed. "Well, fine, I'll be quiet…" So she had interrupted him… that one time…

"Yes, you do that," he favored the arm in the cast, trying to scratch under it with no success—especially after she slapped his hand away. "It itches," he complained.

"You wouldn't let me scratch last year when I had a rash." She pointed out.

"Doctor Kadowaki told me not to let you." He said in his defense.

"The _story_," Kagome said impatiently.

"Fine… As I was saying before I was _rudely_ interrupted—"

"Would you just tell the story?"

"Would you just shut up?" Kagome's lower lip pushed its way out, and unknowingly made her look uglier than normal. Squall continued, "Shiva picked me up and carried me for a long time. She was cold but the cold didn't bother me."

Kagome asked, "So how come you won't eat or drink anything?"

Squall was quiet for a moment but then he said, "She left me and all those fiends came back out. I can summon her again if I need her help; that's all she said before she disappeared." Squall shuddered and Kagome understood what he was saying.

"You couldn't summon her 'cause you haven't been taught to junction yet."

"I'm not you." Squall sniffed and brushed a hand over his eyes irritably. "You _like_ this stuff… I just have to do it."

Kagome sat back, her mind processing what she'd overheard Headmaster Cid and Sir Auron talking about, and what Squall just told her. "Today I heard the geezer talking to Sir Auron… They said you and me are Natural Magi, Squally…"

"…I don't understand…" Squall admitted softly. "What does that mean?"

"Remember when I told you about Kikyou the greatest Warrior ever to live?" He nodded slowly, his eyes still shining with uncertainty. "She was a Natural Magi. She could use magic without junctioning, or without using bottled magic from the store. Me and you are like that, at least that's what the old man said."

"Fat lot of help that was," Squall muttered, looking ill at ease.

"But… the thing is, the Headmaster is gonna test you… I think they want to see how you do under pressure… and I think this could be a chance for you."

Squall looked at Kagome, his expression nervous. "A chance for what?"

"It's an opportunity… you know… if you don't want to be a SeeD… maybe you could talk to the old man. He said something about…" Kagome gulped, and paused to think for a moment. Did she _really_ want to continue her thought? In the best interests of her best friend, she knew she needed to. It was as her father told her: Don't do anything unless you plan to do so with everything you are. If Squall didn't want this path, he would be putting himself and other people in danger.

"What?" Squall urged her to finish.

Kagome hugged her legs, looking away from him. "They said something about a Magic Guild, Squall… Cid could probably send you there instead… or else there's lots of families… you could live with them and be a normal kid with a normal family…"

Squall looked like he'd been slapped. "Go away from where you are…?"

"Well, I mean… I have to stay here… It's my only chance left. I went to Galbadia and Trabia, and neither of those schools kept me, and before that I had a lot of schools that I went to. I think using magic is bad and I hate the idea of using it. And then Sir Auron said something about us going crazy and I think the best way not to go crazy is if I don't use magic… Plus, I want to be a warrior, not some kind of Sorcerer like they said you are."

Squall shook his head, "I don't want to leave you, Kagome… they can't make me…"

"Well, Cid said he was going to take you out of the SeeD program… What _else_ would you do here?" Squall shrugged but looked less certain still. "Well, look… if you want to stay, I think you should only do it because you _want_ to be here… not so you and me can be together… We can always write to each other, and when we're all grown up we can see each other again. But being a warrior isn't something you should do unless you _want_ to. Otherwise you'll get hurt or else the people you're trying to protect will get hurt."

Kagome looked at the silent boy for a long moment and then reached under her shirt, pulling out the Griever pendant from there and unclasping the toggle. "Here…" she said, unjunctioning the GF to take it off and put it around Squall's neck.

"No matter what happens or what you decide to do, you'll need this more than me. Junctioning isn't hard… you just have to open your mind to the GF and Griever'll do the rest." He looked confused as she wrapped it around him and tucked the toggle through one of the links in the chain. "You can practice, but don't tell anyone you have it… promise me…" He simply nodded.

Squall lifted the pendant into his view and looked at it, turning it to see the symbol of the lion's head atop the cross. "This is a GF?" he asked her. She nodded. He said, "I had a trinket just like this… It was all I had with me when I was…" he trailed off.

Kagome scooted closer, leaning against his propped up pillows beside him. "When what, Squally?" she asked softly, tucking the pendant under his robe. He shifted and leaned against her. Kagome brushed his bangs from his face like her nanny used to do for her when she was upset, like she could tell Squall was at the moment.

"When I was left at the orphanage… I remember sis saying it was my mother's, and that someday my father would find me 'cause he'd recognize it… but…" Kagome felt her shirt gather moisture but she didn't say anything about it or tease her friend. "But now, my father won't find me… because when we got out of the cave, it was missing…"

Kagome hugged him, causing him to wince, but he didn't make a sound of complaint. "Then _I'll_ go find it." She wasn't sure she could, but she certainly would try… His stomach growled and she said, "You're gonna eat, young man!" just like her nanny would say to her, sans the 'man' part. "You're too skinny."

"I am not."

She pinched him and he yelped but he was too exhausted already from his weakened state. "Are too. Don't argue with me. I'll go get you a hot dog." He made a face. "Hot dogs are the best, and they'll have you better in no time!" she insisted.

Squall said, "Hot dogs are nasty. I'd rather not…"

The curtain to his enclosure was thrust open and quickly filled with people. Headmaster Cid was there with Doctor Kadowaki; she probably called him. Sir Auron and Ashe had also arrived. Their presence annoyed Kagome greatly, but when Ashe said, "Kagome, come with me," Kagome found herself moving instantly to obey the authority figure.

"Kagome, where are you going?" Squall asked in a small voice.

Kagome looked at him before hugging him. "I'm not going to say goodbye," she said, returning the words he'd said to her before summer began. "Saying goodbye would be pointless, right, princess?"

He glared at her and she jumped from the bed to the floor, landing with a thump. Turning, she reached up and grabbed the icicle containing the flower. "Ice princess!" she giggled before turning to the Headmaster, saluting him, and then racing ahead of Ashe out of the enclosure.

She didn't really want to leave him alone, but she knew she couldn't stay. She told herself things would be okay, but she worried he might not want to be a warrior. As much as she told him they could write, she still hoped to see him every day like she grew used to last year.

Ashe took her to get her uniforms—Ashe said nothing to the fact that Kagome was wider than the previous year—and lectured her for a few minutes for disobeying orders and leaving the dorm rooms. That night, Squall had to sleep in the infirmary with Doctor Kadowaki, and Ashe refused to let Kagome stay with him. She thought she would have gotten to see him in the next few days as well, but still she was unable to. The summer ended and cadets returned. School began; still Squall was in the infirmary.

Kagome had plenty of time to think, and her thoughts were very troubled. Seifer's bed remained empty all that time. She had no clue where he went to, but he was never in class or anywhere else.

A week later as Kagome and her seven other roommates prepared for the day, Ashe stepped in as she usually did every other day with mail. "Good morning, everyone," Ashe greeted them all pleasantly.

Kagome ignored Ashe. She was still upset that Ashe was firmly keeping check on her. She had tried upwards of a dozen times to sneak off to Squall, but every time she'd been caught. Ashe had eyes _everywhere_ it seemed. Kagome buttoned her uniform shirt up as morning mail was delivered.

Ashe set a letter on Kagome's bed. "Here you go, Kagome," Ashe said, not unkindly before she turned around and went back to the dorm door. "You have six minutes to be ready, Cadets. Do not waste that time on your packages; they will still be there waiting for you when you return from the day's lessons." Ashe said that every day, and though others might have groaned, Kagome did not. She grabbed up the letter, figuring it was probably from Maria her nanny, and stuffed it in her satchel with her other things.

Kagome firmly tied on her school issued boots. Other students still needed help with their uniforms, but Kagome was completely independent of Ashe. It was something Ashe noted to the Headmaster once and Kagome overheard.

Quistis was first in line, and Ashe was knelt down assisting the blond in lacing her boots. Kagome joined the growing queue of cadets waiting to head to homeroom. The students who took longer than six minutes to join the line were given detention, and Ashe lectured the group about being punctual before leading them to class.

Kagome was unable to slip away, yet again. She made it to homeroom without being able to see Squall, yet again. Sitting back in her usual seat at the back of the classroom, she looked at Squall's empty chair. How long would he be in the hospital, she wondered.

Their homeroom teacher that year was Instructor Lulu. For some reason, Kagome had always thought Lulu looked strange in the SeeD uniform, but she had to admit that black definitely was Lulu's color. As soon as the cadets from two dorms were situated, Kagome realized someone had taken Squall's seat and she glared at the boy. She then noticed something strange: Seifer's seat across the aisle was also filled in.

Instructor Lulu went through role call and they were then given half an hour to proceed through their unfinished work. Since Kagome always had her homework complete at night before bed, she pulled out her letter and looked at it. The hand writing was too big and shaky to be from Maria. Turning it over, she found a return address on the back, and to her shock, Squall's name was the addresser.

Frowning, she read the address: _Squall Leonhart, Magic Guild, 3204 Zanarkand Way, Galbadia City, Galbadia._ Why was Squall mailing her from Galbadia? She looked back and reread 'Magic Guild' and her heart fell into her stomach. He left her, didn't he? He didn't want to be a SeeD… he would rather use magic, while she hated magic and wanted nothing to do with it.

She carefully opened the envelope, not wanting to destroy the return address. Pulling out the letter, she unfolded it and started reading.

_Dear Kagome,_

_I did what you said and took my oppertonity. I don't know what I want, but I will figer it out and for now I told headmaster Cid I know I'm a sorcerer and I want to go to the magic guild. He told me he wood talk to them and then I was on my way to the train in Balamb the next day. The headmaster said there wasn't enuf time to see you first, but he gave me the address to send you letters. _

_The headmaster took me to the train station, and I had to ride by myself to Timber. Someone from the magic guild waited for me in Timber, and we got on another train and got off at a train stop near Galbadia City, then got in a car that waited there for us and drove the rest of the way. _

_There is less people who learn from the magic guild than from garden. There is less instrukers to. There is one girl who is a student here who is very quiet. She was very nice to me; I asked why she bothered and she said it is her duty as a princess to be kind to everyone. She says she's princess of burmesea or something, but I never heard of it. After the day finished, she was asking me a lot of questions so I told her it was none of her business and she wasn't very nice after that. _

_The work is hard to do, but I think I managed to junction the Griever GF you gave me. Just like I promised, I haven't said anything to anyone about it. I was keeping it under my shirt, and a instrukter noticed it. He tried taking it away since we're not allowed jewelry, but then I was afraid I would lose it so I summoned Griever and she came, swords for legs and arms and wings and she protected me. Now, no one will talk to me, even if that isn't a bad thing._

_But Griever asked me why I had her, and I told her cause you gave me her. I thought I did something wrong, but she said I remind her of someone from long ago. Then two days later, a woman showed up. She said she was Paine, and we talked a lot… well, I talked, she listened, but I felt I could talk to her. _

_She comes back tommorrow too so I get to talk to her again. She wants to take me to lunch. I asked the magic guild master why she was coming, and he said I should expect a lot of visitors because they will find me a home._

_I miss you a bunch already. I'm scared if they find me a home, I won't see you ever again. Please write back to me. Tell me I'm being dumb again. Squall Leonhart._

Kagome found the letter with a pre-addressed envelope that already had postage on it. Smiling at her stupid best friend, she took out a sheet of paper. Her penmanship was notably better than his, as was her grammar and spelling. She wrote out the letter and then wrote in every single bit of free space on the paper, "Don't be dumb!"

She told him about her classes. She told him how at some points in the day, Ashe walked her from the normal class to a class with older students so she could take a foreign language course and a computer course. She told him how the cadets in that class laughed at her in the beginning and told the instructor to stop joking around and send the 'little girl back to her classroom'. Kagome told him then how she—on the first day of class—outshone all the other students by knowing answers to questions they didn't simply because she remembered them from her text book.

She wrote about Seifer's mysterious disappearance, and of her summer, omitting the fact that her parents found a new 'special' child… one that could bring her parents together, while she could not. She also chose not to tell Squall of the strange experience she had with Quezecotl, deciding it was best left spoken in person… not trusting to write it in a letter that anyone could read…

For the most part, she wrote her summer as if she'd been taken to the school for additional learning, rather than saying she'd run away and was found by the headmistress.

She sent the letter off with a pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelope enclosed later that day, utilizing the letter collection box in their dorm room.

When her first week of classes finished up, she spent the weekend getting up early and going to the recreation room to practice the things she learned over the summer with Rikku, Yuffie, Paine, and the other teachers at the Gullwing's School. She knew very well that she did most of the motions wrong, and continued to try correcting herself.

Wanting to be a warrior was a hard path to follow, but she continued to go down the path with determination.

Week two started up her training with Yuna once more, and Kagome trained diligently, however bad she seemed to be at it. Between her classes and the work they assigned, training with Yuna, and weekends spent training in the recreation room, she hardly had the time to fight imaginary fiends.

However, she quickly made habit of _making_ time for writing to Squall every time he wrote to her. He would tell her of the things they were having him learn, and of the annoyances he had to deal with every day. She would return with stories of her own lessons and explain in great detail a fight she had gotten into during the week—usually after being called 'ugly'. Sure, she could stop herself from beating on people what with having her tourmaline gem pendant, but she chose not to. Because of that, she ended up in detention more often than not.

When he wrote to her, proclaiming no surprise at Seifer's disappearance, she wrote back about how Seifer would never have made it as a warrior anyway.

Squall continued to write to her about visits that he had from 'potential families', but the only one who seemed to come back to visit him was someone named 'Paine', who he appeared to take a liking to. Kagome was surprised when she received a picture along with one letter, and found that the woman who her best friend liked spending time with was the headmistress of the Gullwings' school in Esthar's lowest levels. She hadn't thought really about how his Paine and her Paine shared a name, until that moment.

The picture of Squall and Paine was of the two of them in a park in Galbadia. They looked…eerily similar… Neither of them smiled. Squall was throwing food to some ducks on a pond, and Paine was seated on a nearby bench with a cup—probably containing duck feed—in her hands as she watched Squall quite expressionlessly.

When Ashe saw that picture, she later gave Kagome a picture frame, and the picture went into the frame and sat next to Kagome's bed. Before too long, Kagome started going to the recreation room to practice in the morning after waking up. She practiced the things she learned with the Gullwings' at that time, because after two months of weekends, she felt she wasn't working hard enough. If she didn't do everything with her whole heart, her father would be displeased…

She wrote to Squall, telling him he needed to work on smiling more. She was oblivious to the fact that _she_ hadn't smiled in a month.

She put everything she had into her training, and then one late Saturday morning when Kagome was in the Recreation Room practicing her punches against a dummy she was startled to find hands correcting her footing… even _more_ stunned to note that it was Sephiroth, the elusive Senior Cadet, who had done it. She rushed into her training again with renewed vigor after that.

December came around and Kagome received a letter from Squall stating he'd been adopted by Paine, the woman who often came to visit him.

_I'm really happy. I like Paine. She's very strong and a very nice lady. _

With the letter, Squall had sent a dozen pictures of himself and Paine. Paine was actually smiling in one, although it was more like a smirk. Squall was smiling as if his face never knew a frown. Squall was hugging Paine.

In that same letter, Squall wrote to Kagome that he told the Guildmaster he wanted to go back to Balamb. Squall promised he wasn't coming back just to be with Kagome. He said he wanted to be strong like Paine, and fearless like Kagome; he also said that the students at the guild were jerks and he didn't like being there with them.

The letter excited Kagome and she stuck the pictures in her bedside table drawer. The one with smiling-Squall and smiling-Paine was put in the frame, replacing the other one.

To pass the time until Squall's return, she threw herself into her work and training. She was excelling to the front of all of her classes. Even the classes she took with older students, she had top ranks. Her only problem was the math class, which Quistis was beating her in again.

As for her physical training, she remained sub-par in that. She continued to have to go to detention for beating up other cadets, but the most notable time was for being up a fourteen-year-old after he called her fat and ugly. Sure, she could have stopped, but she felt he deserved it.

**Thank you for reading! Sorry about the crappiness of the chapter, but I've had a tough time getting anything out at all, so hopefully it was okay anyway. Let me know what you thought, please...**


	5. Chapter 5

**Title: The GF Mage**

Author: Tsubasa Kya

_Disclaimer__: I make no profits off this._

Chapter 5

It was three parts boredom and one part curiosity that formed the recipe for what came to be Kagome's interest the first day of midwinter holiday break in classes and training. There were too many hours in the day, and without Squall to occupy much more time than it took to read or return a letter at the moment she was absolutely soaring in her courses. Granted, the courses with the older students – the computer course and the foreign language one – she was struggling a bit in, but she kept reasonable scores in the classes.

Still, with the week long break and no classes to take, Kagome was constantly trying to find something to do. After just a few hours into the first day of the midwinter break, she got caught attempting to bust into the training center and fight some fiends. Needless to say, the headmaster was less than thrilled, but he chastised Kagome and sent her off to serve detention with the disciplinary committee… who then assigned the very watchful SeeD Balthier to supervise her detention.

So while Kagome learned her lesson by mopping floors, Balthier leaned back on two legs of his chair against a wall and settled instantly for a nap. She hated mopping. The menial labors of clean up hardly seemed like a warrior's duties. That was often why Kagome's area of the dorm room tended to get a bit messy. She cleaned it up before dorm inspection happened once a week, but didn't like doing it.

"Oi! Stay off'a my floor!" Kagome snapped as a fifth person tromped muddy boots over the floor.

She hated mopping. She _especially_ hated mopping the cafeteria—in daylight hours, with traffic. _The next person who mucks up my floor is getting a broom in the face._ Kagome thought heatedly, feeling the blood rush to her head.

She soaped up the muddy prints and turned around, headed for the bucket to rinse her mop out. She put the mop head in the dirty water and stood back a step to brush a hand over her forehead. With Balthier sleeping she could as easily wander off… but if the job wasn't done by the end of her hour's worth of detention time, she'd just get another detention.

As she was wringing out the mop head, she heard heavy footprints…

Clomp… Clomp… _Schlumph_… The water drenching the floor from Kagome's mopping was moved. Again.

_Nuh uh!_ It wasn't going to happen again. She reached for the lever, releasing the mop head from the handle. The stick was lighter that way, and a very angry Kagome spun around and rushed at the _idiot_ who wanted to muck up her clean floors—mop handle raised as a loud shout emitted from her lips.

Her attack was defeated pretty much before it began. With a 'shick' sound, her mop handle was cut off at the top, so when she attacked it didn't hit anything. It fell uselessly to the ground, and she toppled over on her face in shock.

It wasn't until her face hit the floor that Kagome realized… the person she'd just attacked was Cadet Sephiroth…

She felt the eyes of the few people in the cafeteria had turned to her. She looked up at him, feeling her arms shaking slightly as she shifted herself up a bit. Those odd blue eyes looked down at her practically _screaming_ at her to apologize for disturbing his passage to the counter.

Then, she did something that no normal child would do because even a normal child would have the common sense that Cadet Sephiroth was _not_ one to mess around with. He was the sort that people shied out of the way of. His presence was incredibly commanding. Superior SeeD's didn't try bossing that particular cadet around because he wouldn't allow it. But, of course, Kagome was as usual herself.

Which—given her track record—she could afford to not be once in a while… But, get a child to pay attention to her track record… a person might just win a medal…

Kagome stood up and held her remaining mop handle like it was a sword. "Get off'a my floor!" she yelled. Her shriek managed to wake Balthier and he tipped off his chair. "I mean it!" she said, brandishing her **sword** at him.

Balthier—unlike the presently gaping cadets and lunch ladies—got to his feet and moved to intervene. Unfortunately for the child, Cadet Sephiroth had other plans. He held his hand out to Balthier, motioning him to halt. "She's a brash _child_, Cadet Strife!"

Cadet Sephiroth merely looked down at Kagome while she stared up at him with a fiercely determined expression on her face. She would not back down from this. She would protect her mopped floor even if he did use that sharp, very real sword to cut off her mop handle. That wouldn't even phase her!

Still, this would definitely be a battle Squall would love to hear about. But, of course, only if he stepped on her mopped floor, of course. If he stopped messing up her floor—her nicely mopped spot of the floor—she wouldn't hurt him. She wouldn't _have_ to hurt him. He might have a sword, and weird cat-like pupils, and mean looking eyes, and maybe he was ridiculously gigantic and she was only a pudgy little girl. But she was a tough, mean pudgy little girl who just last week got into a fight with a twelve year old—and won! She was a real warrior, with real strength. It didn't matter that she'd spent three days in the infirmary herself and not to mention the phone call she had with her father (she hadn't liked that very much as he yelled at her for using precious infirmary utilities).

Still… now that she was riled up, she found herself kind of wanting to fight, hoping he'd dare to step forward… especially since it would make such a good story to tell Squall. So, she taunted him…

"Go on, take a step on my floor! I double doggy dare ya, and when ya do, I'm gonna knock you a new one!" she wasn't exactly sure _what_ her taunt 'knock you a new one' meant, but when she'd heard an older cadet say it, it had certainly seemed taunting.

He took a step forward. She swiped her sliced off mop handle at him and he knocked her attack aside. Then everything suddenly went dark.

When she woke up, she found herself in the infirmary. She sat up with a loud holler. "GAAAH!"

Hearing her patient's shout, Doctor Kadowaki entered the bed's enclosure, clucking her tongue. "Noisy from the first; as usual." She said. "You're quite a silly child. Really, picking a fight with a boy twice your age, thrice your size, and fully trained! You're lucky he went easy on you."

"Blast!" Kagome shouted, ignoring the doctor. "He _cheated_ in our fight. He must'a used magic."

"Of course he did. Standard sleep spell." The doctor sighed. She tried to talk to Kagome, but the young girl simply did not want to hear it.

Pushing the blankets off her body, Kagome said, "I can go now, right?" She was already climbing out of the bed before the doctor could even say anything. However, she was picked up and placed back on the bed.

"Not so fast," Doctor Kadowaki insisted.

"You can't keep me here forever!" Kagome yelled angrily.

"Fine!" The doctor sighed, throwing her hands up in retreat. "Don't come crying to me when you realize you can't walk straight. The magic will wear off."

Kagome was already gone before the woman could even finish talking. She had a problem to fix because now she had an ultimate rival; and she was going to beat him and prove herself the strongest warrior in the whole world. She rushed out of the hospital wing, tripping over her clumsy feet and then walking herself into a wall.

It might have been better if she'd stayed and heard the doctor out, but she wasn't willing to listen. She was _eight_ after all, and knew herself better than any doctor. And no doctor was going to stop her from finding her ultimate rival, ooh, the thought of him made her so mad – that _bloody cheater_ used magic in their fight.

Kagome shook her head from her position on the floor. She got to her feet and took a few steps only to topple forward, earning sniggers from the people in the hall. Kagome glared at those other cadets.

"I'll smash my fist in yer faces too!" she yelled at them, only to watch them all giggle and keep on going. "Yeah, that's right, keep walkin' cuz I'm better than all you!"

She got to her feet and held the wall able to make it several feet before she saw Ashe. Great. If there was anyone who would stop her from going and defeating her ultimate rival, Ashe would. Well, then her ultimate rival would just have to suffer extreme humiliation a little later than she planned.

Especially since Ashe stopped right in front of Kagome, putting one hand on her sword hilt and the other on her uniformed hip. "You're such trouble."

"I am not!" Kagome yelled. She clenched her fists. Everyone always called her that, but it wasn't true. Her own father accused her of being troublesome, and she wasn't. She just wanted to be a warrior and people kept getting in her way.

"Come on then, I'll carry you ba—"

"I can _walk_ all myself!" Kagome was in a yelling mood. She took a step, and fell flat on her face.

"I can see that." Ashe rolled her eyes. She scooped up the young girl, who fought it, but then she said, "Enough of that." She spoke very sternly and Kagome grumpily stopped fighting as she was ordered to.

Kagome was taken back to her dorm and set on her bed. She didn't like the way things were going.

"You go to sleep." Ashe told her seriously.

Kagome crossed her arms over her chest irritably and huffed. The larger problem was, Kagome did _not_ want to go to sleep. But at least Ashe seemed assured she would stay there because she turned and left. Kagome sat there, grumpy and determined _not_ to do what Ashe told her to do which was nap. Eventually she realized that by sitting there, she was starting to get sleepy. So she shook herself and slapped her cheeks, then whined and rubbed the red marks she'd just made. She grasped her notebook for writing to Squall, deciding that sleep was currently a bad idea because Ashe wanted her to.

She regaled the tale of her ultimate rival's attack on her person and consequent cheating to her best friend, and after her letter was finished she set it aside and tried to think of what else she could do while staying in the bed. She didn't have a whole lot of options so she pulled out one of her class books and started reading it.

That put her to sleep.

The following morning she was awake even earlier than her normal time. She quietly got her uniform together and carried her boots, her baggy pajama shorts making soft whispering noises. First, a shower. Then she'd finish putting together her letter for Squall and get that over to the mail slot. After that, she could go for breakfast and lastly, find her ultimate rival and demand a rematch.

That jerk really didn't know who she was, did he? He must not if he made such a dumb mistake as to get on her bad side. She'd been battling fiends since she got her first sippy cup! Arg!

She got all the way down the dormitory hall to the bathroom before realizing she forgot her shower sandals. Sharing showers meant everyone had to have shower sandals so that people weren't sharing foot fungus. She then had to tread all the way back, get her sandals, and by that time she may as well not have bothered getting up early because it was her normal wake up time.

Sheesh, what a hassle.

But she was going to be the best warrior ever, and a mere detour getting her shower was nothing she couldn't handle. She set her pile of stuff on the counter, taking off her pretty tourmaline pendant and setting that aside. She remembered her mother telling her not to take it off, but she didn't want to wear it in the water and so she never did. After showering, she pulled her uniform on and when she bent to put on her socks and combat boots, she heard a tearing noise.

She felt her eyes tear up. 'I'm not fat!' she thought bitterly. But she turned around to look at herself in the mirror. There was a huge rip in her uniform shorts. Great.

Kagome picked up her boots and pajamas, running practically barefoot back to her dorm. She grabbed a new pair of shorts and changed quickly. It was a mercenary school; things like propriety weren't particularly on the teacher's agendas, so she didn't even think about the fact that she was a young girl in a room with ten others. Besides, it was very early morning _and_ it was the holiday break. Those who were close enough had traveled home. Those who stayed were sleeping still.

She and Squall had been the only ones who got up early. Well… she was. And then she'd wake Squall.

But now… Squall had gone away and it wasn't time for them to reunite just yet. She stuck the ripped shorts under her mattress. Her father could not find out about those. He had called just to yell at her when he got her usual three-month health exam report and it said she was five pounds heavier than she'd been at the last report. She didn't want to know what he'd do if he found out she ripped her pants because her bottom was too big for them…

She shuddered and put her hand to her cheek. "Daddy…" he'd hit her. She still remembered it.

"Cadet Higurashi!"

Kagome felt her spine snap to attention at the barked words, but then there was a snickering of the kind she'd absolutely _never_ forget.

...Seifer...

"Hey fatty-" he said in greeting. She never let him finish. Before he knew what had happened, she was streaking across the room and –

Foiled. She was struggling to crack a few knuckles on Seifer's pretty boy skull, but someone had her by the back of her clothes. Ashe cast _Esuna_ on Kagome, removing the _Berserk_ status effect Kagome had inadvertently cast upon herself. She'd forgotten her necklace in the showers.

"Kagome, what were you told?" Ashe asked.

Kagome bristled, hanging there. Ashe was straining to hold her weight up like that, and soon Kagome was set on the floor again. Kagome crossed her arms over her chest and said, "Harrumph!" She stuck her tongue out at Seifer who still held his hands to his face as if to protect it. "I have more important things to do." She stalked back to the bathroom and located her tourmaline gem. With that on, she went back to get her socks and shoes on in her dorm. Seifer was gone – where he went to, Kagome had no idea. She didn't even know where Quistis had gone off to. That girl could sleep like a log. She was very rarely awake at this time of the morning.

On her bed were two letters. The first one was from Paine and the other instructors and girls at the Gullwing's School for Girls. Paine wished her a merry midwinter and told her of how things were going at the Gullwing's. Paine said she had adopted a young charge… Squall Leonhart…

It confirmed what Kagome already knew. But Paine had more to say about it.

_I know you meant well when you gave away Griever the GF. I was right to choose you. It is thanks to you that I have met Squall. He may not be a young girl in Lower Esthar City, but he needs you and me both. He speaks very highly of you, but he does not trust me. I believe he is troubled where he is. He will not tell me what is wrong; I hope that you will write to him and he will tell you. _

Squallie was in trouble! Kagome had to save him! She tossed the letter down and looked at the second bit of mail. It was from Squall, which was indeed very convenient.

_Dear Kagome_

_I donno why yoo hate me. Yoo don't rite no more and I tried too ask Cid too take me back as a Gunblayd Spesialest but Cid said no. Magic skool is boring. The uther cadets are stopid. They don't shut up never. They try too get in my bizness. I miss haveen too wake up early. I miss haveen a wood praktis sword. I miss being brave with yoo. _

_I told yoo about Paine. She visits, sometimes. She took me on a car ride from Galbadia City too Deling City. She says that Deling City is the new capitle city of Galbadia. We walked around and met Laguna Loire and Seifer. Laguna is the president of Esthar where yoo come from. I didn't know Seifer had a father. Seifer is a jerk. He said he knew his father was very important all along. I wish my father cared too look for me. _

_Then we saw a parade. They threw sweets. Seifer ran too get it, but I just stood by Paine. _

_When we were walking after the parade, me, Paine, Laguna, and Seifer came across a girl getting kidnapped. For my first time, I saw what yoo saw when we gotta fix problems. I saw a girl was being kidnapped and I had too fix it. Seifer says I made the problem worser. I wasn't thinking. I ran and jumped in the back of their van before the bad guys could close the door. _

_They were stronger than me. They caught me, so I bit off the bad guy's littlest finger. I got tied up and they hit me a lot of times. But Laguna and Paine and Seifer found us. Laguna telled Seifer too stay in his car, but Seifer followed anyway. When Paine and Laguna saved me and the little girl, I heard Laguna tell Seifer next time he'd tie him up and make sure he stayed in the car. We returned the little girl too her home. She was the daughter of General Fury Caraway._

_It made me really know I never ever ever want too feel the way I did. I was weak. I was helpless. I don't want too feel that way. I want too go back too being a SeeD and never ever be weak again. I want too be strong, and I wont be at the Magic skool. But that don't matter, does it? Headmaster Cid don't want me at Balamb Garden. _

_I guess this is the last time I try too rite too yoo. _

_Bye. Squall Leonhart._

Goodbye. He'd said goodbye. The word absolutely floored Kagome and though she went through a slew of emotions before getting to the end of the letter, now she just felt an icy spear through the heart. Her eyes fell on the picture beside her bed, and the flower that stood in a small pyramid of ice. Squall gave it to her, but now he wouldn't give her anything. It was goodbye. It was the end.

They'd never see each other again…

"Sweet Hyne!" Kagome growled loudly. She'd heard a handful of older students say that when they were very angry and frustrated; well, she was so angry that she felt like she could pick up her whole bed and throw it across the room. She tried. It was bolted to the floor. She tried to pick up her trunk and toss it. It had too many books in it. She wasn't giving up. She tossed each and every book out of the trunk. Then for good measure, she tried tossing the trunk but all she could manage was turning it upside down. She took her lamp and threw it; the metal base dented and the light bulb shattered.

She was throwing off so much _Berserk_ magic, that it was lingering on surfaces. She didn't feel the same kind of crazy she felt when people called her ugly. This was cold. This was as icy as Squall. And to think her morning started out just with the problem of hiding a pair of ripped uniform shorts!

She trashed the dorm and then went in search of Headmaster Cid. He was the problem. He was the reason why Squall was saying goodbye. He was going to pay. First though she needed to find someone who could take her to see Cid. It seemed that when she needed someone, no one was anywhere to be found. So she did the next best thing and went to get herself in some trouble.

The halls and class rooms were empty. That wasn't surprising since it was barely six thirty in the morning. Those who weren't already off on vacation were still in bed. Cid wasn't in the cafeteria or the hospital wing or the library. She checked every room her keycard gave her access to, but since she was female, her keycard didn't give her access to the men's bathrooms or locker rooms or showers, so she couldn't check there for him.

By the time she got to the second floor in her search for him, it was seven and any young cadet would be waking up by now if only to avoid the seven-o-five wake-up call which involved the SeeD dorm watcher to come in and tear your blankets right off the bed even on holidays. Kagome had once heard older cadets who slept past the seven AM bell got their mattress flipped on top of them even. Only SeeD got to sleep past the seven AM bell in Garden, but by then rising early was habit so few slept in.

Standing upon the second floor bridge to the elevator, Kagome waited for it to arrive. A boy of nine stepped off the elevator, his scruffy black hair and dark skin a contrast for his yellow shirt and beige shorts. He carried a deck of Triple Triad cards in his hands. His name was Liu, and he was a very laid-back kid from Timber who, while he never made Kagome angry also wasn't typically someone Kagome hung around.

He saw her and asked, "Hey. You wanna play Triple Triad?"

Kagome glared at him and said icily, "Do I look like I wanna play a dumb card game?"

Liu gulped and dashed off to his usual spot in the middle of the bridge, where he sat in his free time playing cards. She was not a happy camper. The whole of Gaia could see this, and Hyne himself best not interfere with her plans to go save her ice princess.

Kagome waited impatiently for the door to the elevator to slide shut and then glared at the panel. There were five buttons on the panel: B2, B1, 1, 2, and 3. She could only gain access to floors one and two by herself, though she'd been to the headmaster's office plenty of times already to know that only SeeD or Garden Staff would get access to the third floor. Kagome had heard that only the Headmaster and Garden Staff had access to the basement floors.

She decided she needed to get to the third floor and to do that, she had to find a SeeD. By the time she made it back to the cafeteria – the most likely place to cause a scene and get in trouble for it – it was closer to eight in the morning. The SeeD and cadets were awake, showered, and sleepily eating their food or waiting in the slowly growing serving lines. There were two serving windows and it was an unspoken rule that cadets didn't take food from the second line just like it was a cadet's job to run errands for anyone older than them. Hazing was an issue around the place, but none dared try ordering _Kagome_ around. She wouldn't have that!

Boldly Kagome stepped into the SeeD food line, still feeling that rage inside her like stabs of icicles. Balthier was in that line just in front of her. He didn't particularly concern himself with things like which line was which but then again he was rather laid back. He even tried to perk up a conversation with Kagome, but her teeth were grit together far too hard to respond in kind.

The lunch lady looked down at Kagome in surprise, but she handed the girl a breakfast tray without delaying further. Kagome snatched up the tray, ready to go cause a scene that would get her a month's worth of detentions, but at least she'd go to see Cid and she could knock him a touch of sense.

Kagome furiously marched toward a table with a handful of junior cadets seated sleepily eating their food. She literally dumped the tray of bacon, eggs, pancakes, and sausages on a student, upended another kid's tray onto a third cadet, and then took a basket of scones from the table and threw them at a cadet whose back was turned. This all happened in just short of a minute, and it erupted into a free-for-all food fight between those junior cadets who were present. Minutes later, greatly annoyed SeeD were wading into the mess, dragging the junior cadets apart and keeping their wild, frantic motions from being able to grab and throw food.

Kagome's actions resulted in the detentions of three-dozen junior cadets including herself, but no one got dragged in to Cid's office. No one seemed to know who _started_ the fight, so no one got charged with the blame. Kagome told Balthier that she started it, but he still didn't take her before Cid. She was stuck with an extra bell of work scrubbing pots in the kitchens and bread and water suppers for a week.

Tired and irritable, she made her way to the Quad. She'd show them that wouldn't take her seriously!

She removed a few screws in the stage, attempting to topple it; surely that would get her dragged to the elusive Cid, right? She was caught at her work by the Garden Festival Committee and for her attempts, she was forced to spend the day helping put together game stands for the Midwinter Festival and Dance.

Why was it when she didn't _do_ anything wrong, she got dragged before Cid, but when she was _trying_ to get dragged before him, she couldn't? It was greatly frustrating for her.

After causing a shelf in the library to crash down (the librarian said it was always unsteady), toilet-papering the entire Dorm Hall (memos went out, telling cadets once again that while it is Homecoming for most SeeD graduates there is no need to waste perfectly good paper products), and causing a power-outage for three of the second floor classrooms (it was blamed on a faulty outlet maintenance had been _meaning_ to repair), Kagome was ready to pull her hair out.

Already five days had passed since she got the letter from Squall. She wrote him a letter saying, "I'm coming to get you. Pack your bags and be ready to run away when I get there!"

She still felt that cold, oppressive anger chilling her flesh as she approached the front gates. Being that she was only eight, she wasn't allowed beyond those monitored gates without appropriate company. Getting out was certainly going to be tough, but she swore she would. Then once she was _out_ she had to find her way to Galbadia City. She had her school book satchel overstuffed with clothes and her geography book in hand to guide her way. Old man Mac who watched the gate caught her trying to escape. Still, nothing was done. Ashe was called, and she was taken back where she was supposed to be, so she could be watched more closely lest she get up to trouble.

The holiday was fast coming to an end and she hadn't been able to get herself into _enough_ trouble to get herself dragged to Cid's office, and somehow the man never bothered leaving the third floor apparently. She never saw him eating, or walking around...

Finally the day of the Midwinter Festival and Dance had arrived, on the longest night of Midwinter. She couldn't find him _there_ either, and she was just so angry and frustrated at being ignored. She stormed around for a short while, and then it hit her. She was forever getting dragged before Cid if she got into a fight…

Her eyes scanned the crowd for a viable target. Dark blue eyes locked on Seifer Almasy, oh that jerkface, just looking at him made her so mad. She rushed at him, tackled him, pounded him with her fists, bit and scratched him, kicked and elbowed him. He got her good too, and it was clear he was surprised by her sudden viciousness, but she didn't care. Both of them were at _last_ dragged to see Headmaster Cid, who had been walking about all the little game booths set up in the Quad with SeeD Balthier, chatting idly. Had she walked another ten feet and rounded a booth, she would have run right into him!

"Cadet Higurashi…" SeeD Balthier let out a long suffering sigh. "Can't you take a holiday break from trouble?"

Kagome wrestled her way out of the loose grip of her SeeD captor, rocketing at Headmaster Cid. SeeD Balthier intercepted her before she could do any damage to the old man much to her dismay. "Lemme at 'im, I'll beat 'im up for it! It's all your fault, you stupid old fart!"

They could tell this was an issue best handled privately. Seifer was taken to the infirmary to get his broken nose and bruises fixed; Kagome was taken up to Cid's office.

She still couldn't calm down. She was left with a couple of annoyed SeeD to watch her and make sure she didn't do too much damage in Cid's office to wait for Cid to arrive. She paced back and forth on the floor, but soon climbed onto the desk to pace. The SeeD went to take her off, but strong bolts of lightning shocked them when they touched her, disallowing such action. So she was left to pace, lightning crackling over the surface of her skin like static electricity.

When Cid finally arrived, SeeD Balthier, SeeD Yuna, and SeeD Ashe were all there. Ashe because she had always been Kagome's dorm room mistress, Yuna because she was Kagome's personal trainer, and Balthier because he typically oversaw much of Kagome's detention times – not that the eight year old bothered to care why those three in particular were chosen to come. She was still far too angry to do much but pace like an anxious wolf cub.

"Kagome, my dear," Cid began, striding forward in spite of Kagome's angry glare, "what is it that has you upset?"

"YOU!" she stopped pacing to favor clenching her fists and kicking the lamp off the desk. The glass lamp shattered on the floor. Cid was coming to the conclusion that breakable items were best kept in storage as long as Kagome was around, no matter how much he liked them.

"What did Headmaster do, Kagome?" Ashe asked reasonably.

"He told Squallie he can't ever come back, and all Squallie wants is to save the world! Squallie's all by himself now, and I write letters every week but he says he doesn't get them and – and I want to go rescue him and I would'a done if old man Mac didn't stop me, I was right at the gate, and its all stupid Fart's fault!" she pointed an accusatory little finger at Cid, and there was a brief moment of silence as the group attempted to sort out the hastily spoken words.

Yuna was first. "Oh, my…"

"Oh my, indeed," Cid agreed. "This certainly sounds dire."

"It's bad, because you made it bad!" Kagome shouted. "If you weren't a jerkface, Squallie'd be home now."

Balthier asked Kagome, "How do you know this?"

"Duh! Squallie's my best friend. He wrote me a letter and told me everything. How Cid won't even let him come back."

Ashe told Cid, "Sir, it wouldn't hurt to contact the Magic Guild. I'd be honored to take on such a mission."

Cid nodded. "Kagome, my dear, you must go with Yuna. Yuna, my dear… please escort Kagome back to her dorm."

Kagome didn't get to hear any more of what they talked about because she was forced to leave. Once in the safety of her dorm, Yuna saw Kagome dressed in her pajamas and tucked her in for an early bed. Kagome still seethed with anger, but she couldn't object now that she'd seen Cid about it and heard that they were going to go to the Magic Guild. Logic was falling back in place, and she rubbed her cheek recalling what her father had done once. He could do it again. She didn't like it, but he could.

She had to calm down and behave now. "Yuna?" Kagome asked in a small voice, her hand gripping the tourmaline pendant around her neck, feeling the lightning bolt shape of the gem.

"Yes, Kagome?" Yuna sat on Kagome's bedside, smoothing the blankets under Kagome's chin.

"What are they going to talk about? Why couldn't I stay? I was just angry for a little while…" Okay, that was a fib, but Yuna didn't call it out.

"They're going to talk about the possibility of going to the Magic Guild and getting in touch with the Headmaster of the Magic Guild. Missions cost money; there are expenses that need to be paid for travel, food, lodgings, sometimes even money needed to award to miscellaneous expenses." Yuna explained to the young cadet.

"I have money." Kagome said, getting up and opening her bedside drawer. She pulled out a money pouch, dumping the coins on the bed. Copper coins and Silver Gil clattered against each other. "I'll pay for it all."

"Kagome, I know you're a bright girl – the brightest of your class." Yuna picked up a silver Gil; Kagome had five of them, and seventeen copper. "How many of these did you learn it takes to get one train ticket from Balamb City to Timber?"

"Oh, um, one-thousand." She said.

"Very good." Yuna nodded. "And how many SeeD is the _least_ we would send out on a mission?"

"Three…" Kagome could already tell where this was going.

"So how much money needs to be allocated for the mission's travel expenses just to Timber?"

"Three-thousand Gil."

"So you see? This is a costly process; the pros and cons must be weighed, and in the end-"

"Money is why you're gonna leave my best friend to grow all alone." Kagome fought to hold back the tears that wanted to come. "He's not important to you. Money is… just like my daddy trying to pay for me to be a SeeD when its all I ever wanted."

"It's not that easy, Kagome… I wish I could make you understand," Yuna sighed.

"I understand." Kagome rolled over, burying her face in her pillow and seething again. She wanted to scream and shout and kick and hit and shriek some more, but she kept that burning inside her.

"Kagome…"

"Go away!" Kagome said to her weapon's instructor. "You won't teach me the sword, or save my best friend, or let _me_ save my best friend. You're all jerks."

Yuna sighed. She could see she wasn't getting anywhere further with this and left Kagome there.

The young girl slept fitfully, tossing and turning. When she got up in the morning, it was well past the time she normally woke and Seifer glared at her from the end of her bed, leaning on the bed's foot rail.

"You didn't have to hit me, just 'cuz your _boyfriend_''s gone."

"Shut up, or I'll have to hit you again." Kagome snapped. "You're just jealous because I have a boyfriend and you don't." Seifer bristled, wanting to object but Kagome didn't give him a chance. She got out of bed and tossed on the previous day's cadet uniform.

Word was going around at breakfast. A team of SeeDs were being dispatched to Galbadia City. Ordinarily teams went without mention, coming and going free as day and night came and went, changing as the seasons did if needed. This team, however, was an unusual team of SeeDs who had apparently not been out for years. SeeD Auron, a sword specialist who could train Gunbladists if needed, SeeD Ashe, normally stuck as Kagome's dorm mistress since she was one of few who could handle her temper, and SeeD Balthier who was typically on detention assignment.

Kagome perked up, wondering why Ashe was said to be on a mission assignment. Dare she hope that her best friend would in fact get rescued? She ran up to Ashe when she saw the woman coming for her breakfast.

"Ashe! Ashe! Are you going, are you, huh huh?"

Ashe grinned down at Kagome and ruffled her hair. "Yes, we're going to get to the bottom of this. SeeD Yuna will watch over you, Quistis, and Seifer while I'm gone, so _try_ to behave?"

Kagome nodded absently, while internally she began plotting how she could get herself on that mission team. The chances of her, a Junior Cadet, being put on a SeeD detail was so slim it was laughable to anyone except Kagome. She was, however, a very determined girl. If anyone could do it, she vowed it would be her.

"We should be back before classes start up, Kagome," Ashe was saying, "So maybe you and Yuna could head to the stores for new sheets for Squall's bed," it had collected the dust of half a year of being unused, "and chalk his name on his slate?"

"That'll be five minutes work," Kagome muttered. Thankfully Ashe had said 'maybe'. If she'd issued an order to do it, then Kagome would have to do it before she could plot a way to get on the mission detail. Instead, Kagome made the executive decision to do it when she got back – with Squall.

"Behave, Kagome. I mean it." Ashe stated.

"I'm behaved." Kagome threw her lip out in a pout that might have been pretty on a more appropriately proportioned young woman but was horrid on the eight year old girl. "Are you going to be driving to Balamb City in a SeeD vehicle?"

Ashe's lips quirked ironically. "We wouldn't want to walk in this blizzard, would we? Even fiends don't go out in this weather. It's just that we don't have the same common sense."

Nodding emphatically, Kagome hopped up. "I'm going to go get things ready!" she told Ashe, not bothering to add, 'for my own departure.' If Ashe knew she planned to go with, she'd probably make Kagome stay behind. Besides, what better way was there to get battle experience than storming a Magic Guild and rescuing her best friend, battling those cheating wimpy mages who thought they could best a _SeeD_.

She rushed to get a bag packed, smiling brightly as she went.

When she entered the car park, she grinned as she saw the line of gray and yellow vehicles. She recalled from class that the gray vehicles were more driven in summertime when there wouldn't be a chance of snow and ice on the roads. The yellow vehicles were for winter, with ice tractor wheels. The gray vehicles could be winterized if the need arose, with chains on the wheels.

No one was yet present. Kagome went to the service counter. There was no one there – the holiday didn't require the typical SeeD to guard the car park and be certain no one took the vehicles joy-riding, but after _she_ broke in, they would probably think twice and put a guard on the car park twenty-four-seven. The car park was capable of holding ten vehicles, but the school only had six so far; three gray and three yellow. Since she didn't know which of the vehicles they'd be checking out, she simply hid five of the six sets of keys. The key-chain of the remaining vehicle was yellow and had a number two engraved in it. With the other keys hidden, she took that set of keys to the vehicle parked in the number two stall, unlocking it and tossing her bag inside. Her plan was fool-proof.

Leaving the door open, she ran to replace the keys in the car park office. Some might think this pudgy little girl was a little _too_ bright for her age but she considered herself perfectly genius; the best SeeD in the making a client would ever find. Rushing back to the vehicle, she climbed in and shut the door, locking them. She climbed into the space behind the back seat and the back of the cab, hunkering down there to hide.

Sure enough, her plan of hiding the other vehicle's keys worked and soon she heard Ashe's voice as she opened the driver's side door. "-Could be anything, Balthier. Squall being a Sorcerer, the Magic Guild _should_ want him to be allowed equal right to become a SeeD if that's what he wants."

Balthier replied, "I don't like it. The Magic Guild wanted Edea's successor from the day of the attack on the orphanage," as always, the SeeD in charge of detention sounded humored, though what he said was less than a humorous subject. "We claimed not to know which of the children received those powers and that was true enough _then_ but now?"

Auron's deep voice was next, sounding dry and without concern. "Now on Cid's orders, we investigate and find out why Leonhart suddenly wants to leave the Magic Guild."

Kagome liked that idea and grinned as she stayed hunkered down, feeling the vehicle start up and drive off toward Balamb. This was Kagome's very first SeeD mission. Granted, she wasn't supposed to be going, but… when would 'no' ever stop a determined child?

...TO BE CONTINUED...


End file.
